Lindokuhle Mnguni (b. 1994 - August 20, 2022) was a land activist and a prominent leader in the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. [1] [2] [3] He was chairperson of the movement's youth league as well as the chairperson of the eKhenana Commune. [4] He was a leader of eKhenana's food sovereignty project which sought to make the commune more self-sustaining and independent. [5] [6] He was assassinated on 8 August 2022. [7]
Mnguni self-identified as a communist, a pan-Africanist and a feminist. [8] He opposed xenophobia. [9] Inspired by the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Brazil, Mnguni sought to develop an educational programme for the commune that centred around food sovereignty, sustainable development and a model of democratic self-organisation of the poor. [10] [11] [12] [13]
The eKhenana Commune has been the target of repression since its founding in 2018. [14] [15] In March 2021, Lindokuhle Mnguni was arrested and charged with murder along with three other leaders of the movement, Ayanda Ngila, Landu Shazi and Maphiwe Gasela. They were held without bail for over six months. However charges were eventually withdrawn on 27 September 2021, when the sole witness, Mabongi Luthuli, recanted her accusations and admitted to lying under oath. [16] [17] [18]
Along with these arrest, a number of other leaders in Abahlali baseMjondolo were arrested, including Maphiwe Gasela, Siniko Miya, Nokuthula Mabaso, Thozama Mazwi and Sindiswa Ngcobo and, most notably, the deputy president of the movement, Mqapheli Bonono. The cases have been referred to as "bogus" and politically motivated. [19] [20] [21] All cases against AbM members were eventually dropped for lack of evidence. A number of further attacks on movement members in eKhenana, including assault and arson, were said to have occurred later that year including attacks on movement leaders, including Mnguni. [22]
As a result, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI) began litigation to sue the state for damages in relation to the unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution of Mnguni and other movement leaders. [23] [24]
Speaking at a public event in June 2022, two months before he was assassinated, Mnguni said "their strategy to keep us behind bars is not working and the only choice they will be left with is to kill us, but we won’t stop...They will kill us. We even said, ‘it is socialism or death!’ because we want it. No matter what it takes, even if it means death, because we can’t continue living in these inhumane conditions.” [25]
On 8 March 2022, while on his way to fix a water piple, four attackers entered the eKhenana Commune and attempted to assassinate Lindokuhle Mnguni. He escaped unharmed. However the deputy chairperson of the Commune, Ayanda Ngila, was killed by the hitmen who are said to be linked to the local taxi industry and local political leaders in the African National Congress. Mnguni was a state witness to Ngila's murder. [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32]
On 20 August 2022, in the early morning, Lindokuhle Mnguni was killed when two gunmen entered the settlement. [33] The gunmen searched for Mnguni at the community hall and communal kitchen before eventually finding him and is partner asleep inside his home. They fired 13 shots, killing Mnguni and critically injuring his partner who eventually survived. The search and assassination were caught on CCTV cameras that had been installed after the death of Ngila and Nokuthula Mabaso. [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42]
The assassination was widely condemned, including by the largest trade union in South Africa, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa who described Mnguni as "a brilliant thinker, proud communist and internationalist", [43] the South African Human Rights Commission, [44] [45] as well as over 130 other civil society organisations. [46] It was discussed at the 51st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2022. [47]
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Cato Manor is a working-class area located 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) from the city centre of Durban, South Africa.
Abahlali baseMjondolo is a socialist shack dwellers' movement in South Africa which primarily campaigns for land, housing and dignity, to democratise society from below and against xenophobia.
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 115 000 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 South African Unemployed Peoples' Movement is a social movement with branches in Durban, Grahamstown and Limpopo Province in South Africa. It is often referred to as the Unemployed People's Movement or UPM. The organisation is strongly critical of the ruling African National Congress government.
Rubin Phillip is bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Natal. The great-grandchild of indentured labourers from Andhra Pradesh, Phillip is the first person 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.
Mnikelo Ndabankulu lives in Durban, South Africa. He was the spokesperson for Abahlali baseMjondolo up until May 2014 and appears in the film Dear Mandela.
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.
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.
Fire is a serious hazard in shack settlements in South Africa. It has been argued that "On average in South Africa over the last five years there are ten shack fires a day with someone dying in a shack fire every other day." In 2011, 151 were reported to have been killed in shack fires in Cape Town. It was reported that in 2014, 2,090 people burned to death in the Gauteng province, "many of them in shack fires that sweep through informal settlements".
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".
Bandile Mdlalose was the general secretary of the South African shackdwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. She is now the President of the Community Justice Movement which operates in some informal settlements of Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal.
Nqobile Nzuza was a resident in the Marikana Land Occupation in Cato Crest, which is part of Cato Manor in Durban, South Africa. She was a member of the shackdwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.
Nkululeko Gwala originally from Inchanga in KwaZulu Natal, was a resident of Cato Crest, which is part of Cato Manor in Durban and a supporter of the Marikana Land Occupation (Durban). He was also a prominent member of the shackdwellers' social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo and chairperson of their Cato Crest Branch. He was assassinated on 26 June 2013.
Nokuthula Mabaso, was a prominent leader in Abahlali baseMjondolo and one of the leaders of its women's league. She was a leader in the eKhenana Commune. She was assassinated on 5 May 2022.
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]...The Commune is also home to a political school that residents named the Frantz Fanon School, as well as the Thuli Ndlovu Community Hall [Ndlovu was assassinated in 2014]. The Commune has suffered sustained political repression, including multiple arrests and three assassinations in 2022.