Monday, 14 September 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Solidarity with the Comrades Under Attack in the Philippines

Our movement has experienced serious repression, including the targeted destruction of our members’ homes, assault, torture and murder. We have received solidarity from popular movements around the world, and have always offered our own solidarity to comrades under attack elsewhere in the world.

When we say that every person must count as a person we mean that every person must count as a person everywhere. Solidarity does not stop at any border. Continue reading →

1 September 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League

Solidarity with Hlengiwe Gasa and uMthwalume Women

Fourteen women have gone missing in uMthwalume since April. Six are still missing. Another six have been found raped and murdered in the sugarcane fields. The other two managed to escape from the man or men that abducted them. The last body was found, burnt beyond recognition, this weekend.

A group of women in the area formed a women’s organisation, uMthwalume Women, to work to ensure each other’s safety and to oppose violence against women. On 25 July a group of about 100 women from uMthwalume Women marched in protest at the terrifying levels of violence against women in their community. The purpose of the march was to show their concern to the world and to deliver a memorandum to the SAPS, calling on them to act as women in the community were being raped and murdered. Continue reading →

Wednesday, 19 August 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo

The ANC has never been serious about fighting corruption

The ANC is a deeply corrupt and violent organisation. The politicians and their families feed off the suffering of the poor like a plague of locusts. Every budget is an opportunity for someone to become rich, or to become even richer. Money budgeted for the urgent and basic needs of the poor is stolen day after day, and year after year. There are no consequences for the politically connected. They steal from us with impunity.  Continue reading →

Wednesday, 5 August 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo

Solidarity with the People of Zimbabwe

Zimbabweans have been living under oppression for many years due to the iron fist of Zanu PF. Many activists have been spied on, intimidated, assaulted, arrested, tortured and murdered. Making use of freedom of speech is a crime in Zimbabwe. Organising outside of the ruling party is a crime in Zimbabwe.

Now the army is out on the streets attacking people demanding democracy. Journalists are being attacked too. Instead of dealing with the situation in the country president Emmerson Mnangwangwa blames the crisis on what he calls ‘dark forces’ and Western influences. This is exactly what the ANC does when it talks of ‘dark forces’, ‘sinister hands’ and the ‘Third Force.’  Continue reading →

Tuesday, 28 July 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Violent, Criminal Attack in the eKhenana Occupation

Today, at 10:00 am, the eThekwini Municipality launched a violent, criminal attack on the eKhenana Occupation in Cato Manor.

The residents of this occupation are protected by a court order that was granted on 27 December last year, and then reaffirmed on 24 April this year after the municipality repeated attacked the settlement in violation of the court order, the Constitution, the law and the lockdown regulations.  Continue reading →

Monday, 27 July 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League Press statement

We continue the fight against Gender Based Violence

Thursday, 16 July 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Hamba Kahle Ernest Wamba-dia-Wambia

On Wednesday morning we received the news that Professor Ernest Wamba-dia-Wambia had passed away in Kinshasha. Baba Wamba was a good friend to our movement, he engaged the shack intellectuals with great care and respect and we always enjoyed our deep discussions with him. When we were facing repression, he would send us personal messages of support and care.

Baba Wamba understood that the oppressed have to organise themselves for their own liberation, and he understood that, as well as being open to the whole world, we also have powerful tools within our own culture and history to draw on in the struggle.  Continue reading →

Thursday, 9 July 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Unite Against Xenophobia

Since our movement was first formed fifteen years ago we have opposed all forms of repression. We have opposed capitalism, and its enclosure and commodification of land. We have opposed political gangsterism in party politics and the government which turns the state into a killing machine used by politicians to get rich. We have also taken an internationalist perspective and organised in solidarity with comrades in countries like Palestine, Haiti, Turkey and elsewhere.  Continue reading →

Friday 3 July 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Minister Sisulu is Playing Dirty Politics with our Lives & Dignity

If you are poor and black your life does not count to the government. Your dignity can be vandalised at any time. Your home can be destroyed at any time. You can be humiliated, robbed, assaulted and murdered by the police, the anti-land invasion units, private security or the army.

It is assumed that you are beneath the law, and that law enforcement and the state as a whole are above the law. Unless we go to court the law is not applied to us. We are evicted all the time in violation of the law but there are no consequences for the people who give the orders to attacks us, or the people who carry out those orders. We can be humiliated, robbed, assaulted, tortured and murdered with impunity. If we try to open a case against a police officer or government official at a police station we are most likely to be insulted and chased away. We might also be assaulted.  Continue reading →

27 June 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League Press Statement

The Lives of Women & Girls Are Not Respected

If you are poor your life counts for nothing to this society and this government. You can be abused and killed with impunity. Often it is the government that will come to vandalise your humanity.

Poverty, starvation and humiliation are terrible diseases for all impoverished people in on our so-called democracy. The situation is even worse for women and girls. We are subject to constant abuse by the government and men in our own communities. Our motherly is not respected.   Continue reading →