Speaking out for the poor

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=285&fArticleId=3145578

OPINION

Speaking out for the poor

As leader of the Abahlali Base Mjondolo, S’bu Zikode dreams of a home not only for his own family, but houses for all Durban residents
March 8, 2006

S’bu Zikode is tired. All 31 years of him is tired. He makes apologies for the dank smell of his makeshift office, situated in a run-down building perched on a hill overlooking one of Durban’s biggest municipal refuse dumps.

Last week Zikode’s Abahlali Base Mjondolo, a 20 000-strong movement representing squatters in 35 areas, won a victory over the ANC-headed eThekwini council.

The essence of the triumph is that people wanting to protest
are entitled to and don’t have to ask permission to march. They merely have to notify authorities.

Abahlali Base Mjondolo is isiZulu for “the residents of shacks”. The victory for the shack dwellers’ movement is significant, because the city wrongly barred its members from protesting in November, which led to a bloody confrontation between them and the police.

Zikode seems an unlikely leader of an angry grouping of homeless people. He speaks softly but deliberately.

He arrived in Durban from the backwaters of Loskop outside Estcourt at the age of 21. The son of an unemployed labourer and a domestic worker, he studied law at the erstwhile University of Durban-Westville for three months.

He says poverty got the better of him. He ran out of money for food and accommodation and couldn’t absorb the education he was after.

He seems wistful about the failure and says that he was a boy scout who got three distinctions in matric – for history, English and Biblical studies. He had high hopes of becoming a lawyer.

When Zikode dropped out of university he left the lodgings he shared with his brother-in-law and found a room in a “jondolo” – a shack in Kennedy Road.

“I never expected this, but poverty drove me here. Without money I found fellowship among people who were poor and battling like me.

“If you compare yourself with people living in fancy houses, you feel oppressed.”

Zikode got a job as a petrol attendant, which is what he has been doing until recently, when he was promoted to an administrative position at the garage where he works.

Ineffective
Initially he wasn’t interested in attempts by shack dwellers to organise themselves. Then he realised that community leaders were ineffective old men who commanded no respect from municipal officials.

“These men had muddy shoes and they were told to stand aside when they visited council offices to negotiate on behalf of the people.”

Zikode says that in 2000 he was elected to the Kennedy Road organising committee “because I felt it my duty to bring about change”.

Zikode leans back in his plastic chair. He stops speaking for a moment, rubs his eyes and betrays what will be the only glimpse of militancy in our one-and-a-half-hour interview.

“I asked the people here: What have committees achieved?”

Zikode set about getting the attention of the city’s political leaders. Last year Mayor Obed Mlaba “had no choice but to listen to us”.

Many people won’t like Zikode’s tactics. He said the audience with Mlaba came only after he had encouraged 21 homeless families to invade the local councillor’s offices. They were arrested.

The council estimates there are about 800 000 shack dwellers in Durban. Ratepayers’ money is used to erect 16 000 homes a year.

The city, despite grand promises by leading politicians, can’t seem to keep pace with demand. Some officials tear their hair out, saying shack dwellers don’t have to live where they do, cheek-by-jowl on land that is not serviced. The squatters, they say, have homes in rural areas.

Homes in rural areas, says Zikode, are cold comfort to people who need to be close to work opportunities, education and health facilities. Many are from economically deprived regions in the Eastern Cape.

“People have no choice but to rot here.”

Hazards
They do everything they can to avoid the hazards of raising children in homes constructed from bits of cardboard, packing containers and discarded sheets of plastic.

In Kennedy Road, where Zikode lives, he says 6 000 people share 170 toilets, which is luxurious compared to their 8 000 Foreman Road settlement neighbours who have five toilets and a single tap.

A bittersweet irony, says Zikode, is that the Kennedy Road toilets were built by the apartheid government.

Zikode says the council’s refusal to engage with Abahlali or local organising committees is down- right stupid.

“Every year we re-elect committees. Apart from raising awareness about shack dwellers, we offer home-based Aids care and try to create creche facilities for children.”

Zikode says shack dwellers are only too aware of the dangers of living in areas where building inspectors dare not tread. Devastating fires started by paraffin lamps are lethal. Last year a baby was killed in one such fire near Zikode’s place. He says organising committees try to keep accurate records of who lives where and how long they have been there.

Shack dwellers can’t turn homeless people away, but they would obviously prefer to keep the numbers down to reduce conflict over scarce resources.

“We have to stop the expansion, because it is dangerous from the point of view of fire and sanitation,” he says.

And, here’s the rub, if the council was to formalise Kennedy Road, then the local committee would be the obvious place to start.

The council’s attitude to Abahlali has been less conciliatory. Abahlali’s marches have been banned and police have teargassed, beaten and arrested its members – a litany of oppressive acts that has been documented by the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Civil Society.

Zikode sighs. “Nobody cares . . . council doesn’t have a policy or a system for housing. If there are 800 000 shack dwellers and they are building 16 000 houses a year, how long will it take them to meet the demand?”

He says Abahlali leaders suggested that members should boycott last week’s municipal elections. Springfield Park and Clare Estate, the suburbs that are home to most Abahlali members, experienced one of the lowest voter turnouts (about 30%) in the elections.

“This movement was established out of anger. They (politicians) run around like mad asking for our votes today, and tomorrow when you ask them to keep the promises they made, they set the police on you.”

Zikode says if he woke up tomorrow as mayor, he would address the needs of the poor and would think twice about spending R1.6 billion on a world-class soccer stadium for 2010.

I ask Zikode if that’s not an oversimplification of issues. He says many well-intentioned people would do more to help the poor if the city’s leadership were orientated around the needs of the poor.

Challenge
“If you had time for the poor, that would make a difference. They say Durban is South Africa’s best-run municipality – not while people are living in shacks . . . I have issued a challenge to all progressive leaders, academics and politicians to come and live in a jondolo for five days, to feel what we feel, to see what we see. Nobody has responded to that.

“Council wants to control everything from on high, from comfortable, airconditioned offices.”

So, does he have any solutions to the housing crisis?

“Our aim is to assist the government, not to oppose it. If we wanted to oppose the government then we would be asking people to vote for S’bu Zikode. But we aren’t. We want land and housing, and if it takes five years to get it, let us sit down and talk about a plan, but nobody has done that. Their plan is to punish us.”

Zikode is a father of four. He says he has no life other than work and Abahlali. His comrades are his friends, and on the rare occasion when they aren’t organising, he listens to maskanda or R&B music.

A treat is to eat meat.

His wish is to live in a proper, six-roomed house. He dreams of the day that will become a reality, although, as a community leader, he believes his family should be last in line to get one.