Impoverishment Continues to Threaten the Safety of the Poor During the Pandemic

28 January 2021

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Impoverishment Continues to Threaten the Safety of the Poor During the Pandemic

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, we as the poor and marginalized in the townships, rural areas and urban shack settlements have been concerned that once the virus is spread in our areas, it will hit us worst.

When the president of the country first announced the lockdown, it became clear that he was acting as if everyone in the country is a rich or middle-class person. We do not all have access to water and proper sanitation, or the space to effectively social distance. 

The president spoke as if he was not aware of the conditions of people who are living in the rural areas who have to fight for water with animals. He spoke as if he was not aware of the inhuman conditions that we face in the shacks. This is not surprising as the president, like other politicians, only comes to our areas when it is time to seek votes. That is the only time that we are important in the eyes of this government.

Sometimes when politicians do come to the poor they insult and threaten us rather than listening to us and engaging us as citizens. Earlier this month the minister of housing, Lindiwe Sisulu, who has a long history of authoritarianism, visited the Taiwan settlement in Cape Town. She shouted at Nkosikhona Swartbooi, a local activist. Her bodyguards tried to force Swaartbooi into a car, took his phone and tried to force him to delete footage of the minister shouting at hime. Later the minister said that she would open a criminal case against Swaartbooi, whose only “crime” was to say that: “Let’s hope, minister, you won’t do the same as at Empolweni. You promised structures to be built, but you never built them.”

Then, also this month, Lindiwe Zulu, the minister of social development, watched from an armoured police vehicle as the police used a water canon against disabled poor people who were waiting for the social grants in Belville in Cape Town.

When the government sends the state to us they often come with guns and attack us. During the first lockdown the police beat a number of people to death. There were violent and illegal evictions in Durban, and in Cape Town too.

The reality of our country is that if you are poor and black you are ignored by the politicians and abandoned by the state. But when you occupy land, organise or challenge authority you are then attacked with threats, intimidation and violence. Insults, threats, arrests, beatings, torture and murder have all been common forms of repression under the ANC. This is a truth that cannot be denied.

During this pandemic we in the shacks of indignity continue to suffer and die while the political elite and their families live in luxury. We share dirty and dangerous public toilets with more that 2 000 people. We spend hours in queues for water. We burn when there is fire. We are washed away during tropical storms. This has become our daily life. We have no access to roads for emergency services to use.

We are always the last ones in line when development takes place. We suffer because we do not count in the society. Those who are politically connected and those that are rich are the ones who get first priority, and we are only considered once they have had enough. Only then the government remembers that we exist. When we do get something they only give us just enough to survive, not enough to be able to live well.

The ANC have become oppressors but they continue to claim to be a revolutionary movement. Lindiwe Zulu likes to wear a beret with the Cuban flag. One of our occupations was named Fidel Castro by its residents. There will never be an occupation named Lindiwe Zulu. Never.

Castro did not send his soldiers to defeat the apartheid army in the The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola for this. He would be deeply ashamed to be associated with someone like Lindiwe Zulu, and what the ANC has become.

The only good thing is that no one is fooled anymore. No normal person can believe that someone like Lindiwe Zulu is a revolutionary. Anyone who said this would be taken as a joke.

We are concerned that the same contempt that we always receive from this government will be shown when the vaccines eventually arrives. The first problem is that the vaccines will arrive far too late as a result of the government’s failures. The second is that it is we strongly suspect that they will first be used for those who are politically connected and those who have money. Even the Covid grant was hardly accessed in the shacks. The worst off in society are always treated the worst by the government.

How can we expect a government that is failing to provide basic services to the poor in the time of a serious pandemic to provide a vaccine for the poor? How can we even expect a state that humiliates, threatens and murders the organised poor to even care about getting the vaccine to us?

Since we were made and kept poor by colonialism, capitalism and racism we have been dying from diseases such as cholera, tuberculosis and diarrhoea. This is why we fear that we will continue to die from the corona virus. We fear that even when most of the world has managed to control the virus, this pandemic will remain for the poor.

Vaccines cannot only be for the rich. They cannot be a profit-making business. All medicines should be for all of humanity. They must be made free for all people. Medicine cannot be a business. That is anti-human. Medical knowledge should be organised like a library, not a business. The ANC should learn from the health care system in Cuba instead of wearing the Cuban flag while repressing the people.

We will continue to suffer as long as we continue to vote for a corrupt and violently repressive government that holds us in contempt and is driving a neo-liberal agenda. The only way forward is to build democratic popular power across the country.

One of the few things that the ANC ever got right is the ARV treatment programme for people living with HIV. This success came out of a pressure from a social movement, the Treatment Action Campaign, strongly backed by trade unions and other progressive forces. We need the same progressive popular organisation and unity to struggle to ensure that everyone receives the Covid 19 vaccine as quickly as possible, that all infected people receive the best possible care.

The ANC have no excuses for failing the country during this pandemic. Governments with a strong communist or labour history have done much, much better such as we see with the state of Kerala in India and New Zealand.

Contact:

Nomsa Sizani 081 005 3686

Thuso Mohapi 084 042 0813

Mqapheli Bonono 073 067 3274