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Abahlali baseMjondolo is a socialist shack dwellers' movement in South Africa which campaigns both against evictions and for public housing. The movement grew out of a road blockade organised from the Kennedy Road shack settlement in the city of Durban in early 2005 and expanded to the cities of Pietermaritzburg and Cape Town. It is the largest shack dwellers' organisation in South Africa, campaigning to improve the living conditions of poor people and to democratise society from below.
The "Third Force" was a term used by leaders of the ANC during the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to a clandestine force believed to be responsible for a surge in violence in KwaZulu-Natal, and townships around and south of the Witwatersrand.
Sibusiso Innocent Zikode is the current president of the South African shack dwellers' movement, which he co-founded with others in 2005. Abahlali baseMjondolo claims to have an audited paid up membership of over 80 000 across South Africa. His politics have been described as 'anti-capitalist'. According to the Mail & Guardian "Under his stewardship, ABM has made steady gains for housing rights."
Kennedy Road is an informal settlement in Durban (eThekwini), in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Formed in the late 1970s or early 1980s, the settlement was mentioned by the African National Congress (ANC) after the end of apartheid but amenities were not improved. The site is mostly not connected to sanitation or electricity. Dissatisfaction with local councillors led to 2005 protests including a road blockade, out of which the shack dwellers movemment Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) formed. In 2009, an AbM meeting was attacked resulting in two deaths and a court case. More recently, the municipality has improved facilities and promised to relocate inhabitants.
The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign was a non-racial popular movement made up of poor and oppressed communities in Cape Town, South Africa. It was formed in November 2000 with the aim of fighting evictions, water cut-offs and poor health services, obtaining free electricity, securing decent housing, and opposing police brutality.
UnFreedom Day is an unofficial annual event that is marked every year on or around 27 April. UnFreedom Day is planned to coincide with the official South African holiday called Freedom Day, an annual celebration of South Africa's first non-racial democratic elections of 1994.
No Land! No House! No Vote! is the name of a campaign by a number of poor people's movements in South Africa that calls for the boycotting of the vote and a general rejection of party politics and vote banking. The name is meant to imply that if government does not deliver on issues important to affected communities these movements will not vote.
South Africa has been dubbed "the protest capital of the world", with one of the highest rates of public protests in the world.
Rubin Phillip is bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Natal. The great-grandchild of indentured labourers from Andhra Pradesh, Phillip is the first of East Indian heritage in South Africa to hold the position of Bishop of Natal. He grew up in Clairwood, a suburb of Durban with a large concentration of people of Indian ethnicity, in a non-religious household, but converted to Christianity. He was a noted anti-apartheid activist and spent three years under house arrest in the 1970s and was banned in 1973. He was enthroned as bishop in February 2000.
The KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act, 2007 was a provincial law dealing with land tenure and evictions in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
Zodwa Nsibande was the General Secretary of the Abahlali baseMjondolo youth league in 2009. She was critical of the impact of the FIFA 2010 World Cup on shack dwellers in Durban.
The attack on Kennedy Road in Durban, South Africa, occurred on 26 September 2009. A mob of men armed with bush knives, guns and bottles entered the Kennedy Road informal settlement searching for leaders of the shackdwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM). They looted shacks and threatened residents, before attacking a hall where a youth meeting was happening. Two people were killed and around a thousand were displaced. In the aftermath, AbM representatives such as S'bu Zikode went into hiding and thirteen AbM members were arrested.
Michael Sutcliffe is the former municipal manager of the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, which includes the city of Durban, South Africa. He has been widely reported to be a controversial figure amongst Durbanites and has been the target of popular protest in the city.
The Constitution of South Africa protects all basic political freedoms. However, there have been many incidents of political repression, dating back to at least 2002, as well as threats of future repression in violation of this constitution leading some analysts, civil society organisations and popular movements to conclude that there is a new climate of political repression or a decline in political tolerance.
There have been a number of political assassinations in post-apartheid South Africa. In 2013 it was reported that there had been more than 450 political assassinations in the province of KwaZulu-Natal since the end of apartheid in 1994. In July 2013 the Daily Maverick reported that there had been "59 political murders in the last five years". In August 2016 it was reported that there had been at least twenty political assassinations in the run up to the local government elections on the 3rd of August that year, most of them in KwaZulu-Natal.
In March 2013 around a thousand people occupied a piece of land in Cato Crest, Durban and named it Marikana after the Marikana miners' strike. Mayor James Nxumalo blamed the occupation on migrants from the Eastern Cape. He was strongly criticised for this by the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo who said that "The City Hall is red with blood".
Dear Mandela is a 2012 South-African/American documentary focusing on three friends who are members of shackdwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. They fight eviction by making a legal challenge against the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act of 2007 which ends up going to the final court of appeal, the Constitutional Court. The challenge is successful but also results in a violent attack on the Kennedy Road informal settlement in 2009. The film-makers were themselves caught up in the attack.
Ayanda Ngila (1992–2022), was a land activist, a prominent leader in the shack dweller's movement Abahlali baseMjondolo and deputy chairperson of its eKhenana Commune. He was assassinated on 8 March 2022.
The eKhenana Commune is a prominent land occupation in the historic working-class area of Cato Manor in Durban, South Africa. According to the Socio-Economic Rights Institute "The eKhenana settlement is organised as a cooperative in which residents collectively run a communal kitchen and tuck shop, theatre, poetry and music projects, and care for a subsistence vegetable garden named after the late Nkululeko Gwala [assassinated in 2013] as well as a poultry farm named in honour of the late S’fiso Ngcobo [assassinated in 2018].
Lindokuhle Mnguni was a land activist and a prominent leader in the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. He was chairperson of the movement's youth league as well as the chairperson of the eKhenana Commune. He was a leader of eKhenana's food sovereignty project which sought to make the commune more self-sustaining and independent. He was assassinated on 8 August 2022
References
- ↑ Ndabankulu, Mnikelo (7 September 2009). "South Africa's shack dwellers". Guardian. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019.
- ↑ Mnikelo Ndabankulu by Niren Tolsi, Mail & Guardian, 2008
- ↑ Mnikelo Ndabankulu, Mail & Guardian, 200 Young South Africans, June 2013
- ↑ Mnikelo Ndabankulu
- ↑ Abahlali BaseMjondolo: Living Politics, Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa, September 2022
- ↑ Archived 2009-11-23 at the Wayback Machine Going Nowhere or Staying Put, Neil Gray, Mute Magazine, November 2009
- ↑ Award-winners at the 32nd Durban International Film Festival
- ↑ DIFF 2011 | The Wrap Up
- ↑ In 'Dear Mandela', South African Slum Dwellers Fight Back, by Cynthia Fuchs, Pop Matters', 13 August 2012
- ↑ After Mandela, Sean Jacobs, The Nation, 23 June 2013
- ↑ Mnikelo Ndabankulu is awarded the GOLDEN BUTTERFLY prize, March 2012
