The Power of Abahlali and our Living Politic has been Built with Our Blood

17 February 2021

The Power of Abahlali and our Living Politic has been Built with Our Blood

Talk delivered by S’bu. Zikode as part of the virtual speaker series “Thinking Freedom from the Global South”.

May I first of all take this opportunity to thank the American University’s Anti-Racist Research & Policy Center, Department of Critical Race, Gender and Culture Studies and Women’s Initiative for giving Abahlali this important opportunity to speak here today. The most powerful forces of oppression operate at a global level, and for this reason the movements that organise resistance need to connect with each other. Our movement is open to the world, we insist that the world must be shared and we work to build solidarity with progressive forces everywhere.

Students have often played an important role in struggle, and when university trained intellectuals are able to humble themselves and work with oppressed people in a spirit of equality and mutual respect they can play an important role in struggle too.

Thanks to Professor Irene Callis for your leadership and guidance, and for making this discussion possible.

I also appreciate this opportunity and am honoured because I am sharing it with Abahlali scholar and comrade, Professor Nigel Gibson who has introduced me today. For those of you who may not know Professor Gibson, he is not just a Fanon scholar, but was also graduated from the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo with his book “Fanonian Practices in South Africa, from Steve Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo”.

Many academics start their work by assuming that poor black people cannot think for ourselves and that it is their job to think for us, speak for us and decide for us. Nigel always met us as equals. He understands that we can learn from him and that he can learn from us. This is why he is a comrade professor.

I also wish to thank Abahlali, the organisation that has entrusted me with this responsibility as well. In our movement all requests to speak at events like this are referred back to a democratic process before being accepted. No member of the movement represents themselves. We speak with the responsibility of carrying a mandate from the movement.

This virtual speaker series “Thinking Freedom from the Global South” is indeed pushing anti-colonial thought and practice. There are oppressed people everywhere, including the United States. There are also oppressors everywhere, including in countries like South Africa. It is our own elites that murder us when we organise with the simple demand of being recognised as human beings. It is the same in India, Brazil, Zimbabwe and many other countries.

But as we all know since the time of colonialism the countries of the global South have been dominated by the North. There can be no future for humanity unless this is changed and a world of equality between countries and between people is built.

Abahlali baseMjondolo is a radical, mass democratic movement of shack dwellers and other poor people in South Africa. The movement is led by shack dwellers themselves who have often been looked down upon. I remember when we first started, many people did not believe that the poor could think for themselves. They often referred to our movement as umlilo wamaphepha – a fire of papers that will not last. Many of these people even from government were also critical and ashamed of the name of our movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (residents of the shacks). They told us that it was ugly and they even persuaded us to change it into some fancy English name that suggests all African people in South Africa are liberated and enjoy their freedom, while in reality millions of us are landless, homeless, living in deep poverty and excluded from official forms of decision making.

It was colonialism that made us landless, that commodified land and built segregated cities. It was colonialism that came with the idea that some people cannot think, that they do not count as human beings and that they can be repressed and subject to violence with impunity when they try to take their places as human beings. More than 25 years after the end of apartheid we remain landless, land remains commodified and cities continue to be segregated, but now on the basis of class. Our humanity continues to be denied, elites continue to think that we cannot think for ourselves and that they should think and speak for us, and when we insist on our humanity we continue to be subject to violence, even to murder.

For all these reasons our struggle is an anti-colonial struggle. The idea that our languages and culture are primitive and should be replaced with what are seen as ‘modern’ languages and practice be rejected at all cost.

Our movement is open to the world. We learn from comrades everywhere. We are currently pursuing a programme of urban farming on occupied land. The seeds that we used to start this project came from the MST, the landless movement in Brazil. We see this as a beautiful thing. But we also use our own culture and history to build our movement.

I will give one example. In rural villages there are often meetings in which each man is allowed to make his point. That point is not always criticised rather a different view will be raised by someone else. The man who raised the withdrawn point may not be offended by that. This means that no one feels that their dignity has been compromised. Everyone is encouraged to speak and to participate. Through a slow discussion a consensus will emerge about which ideas are best. Often what will emerge will be a mixture of different ideas, or one idea will lead to another one so that in the end the meeting comes to a consensus that has been worked out together. Whoever chairs the meeting facilitates this discussion and is bound to sum up what has been discussed and resolved. The role of the chairperson is not to decide for the people, but to support the process in which people think and decide together.

In the village women may be sitting quietly and not say a word. But women often have the power to influence or send their opinion through their partners or male neighbours outside formal proceedings. This is to say that some men would have received briefing from women prior to getting into the meetings. If a man did not raise the particular point he was briefed to raise, he is likely to receive criticism from that woman. So, women do have some power to strategical influence the meetings behind the scenes.

We use the same method in our movement with one major difference. A majority of our members are women, the majority of participants in meetings are women and meetings are often run by women. In fact, where they are male leaders they are chosen by women and they know that they are accountable to women.

This example shows how our movement draws on our culture and history, sometimes advancing it quite radically, to build a movement, a movement that has survived for 15 years despite very serious repression. There are many other examples such as ways to welcome strangers and to resolve serious conflicts peacefully.

One of the colonial ideas that we have to resist from many quarters is the view that poor African people cannot think for themselves. We find this thinking in the ruling party and the state. It is very strong in the universities and in most NGOs.

There are a number of academics who call themselves socialists and are trusted by the left internationally to represent South Africa who are deeply blinded by the idea that poor African cannot think for themselves. In fact, they have called the idea that we can think for ourselves ‘romantic’ or even ‘Negrophilia’.

Some are so confident that they should be leading the struggle of the oppressed that they have sought to destroy our movement because we have insisted that we will take direction from our members and not from them. They have slandered us, published fraud in their journals, supported state propaganda against us, worked with a front organisation for the intelligence services to attack us and, just like the state, used their money to bribe other oppressed people to attack us. They have often thought that they have a right to decide who should represent our movement and struggle internationally. They have contempt for our democratic structures and our own decision making.

Abahlali was formed in Durban in 2005. The movement was formed to fight for, protect, promote and advance the interest and dignity of the shack dwellers and the poor in South Africa, and to create a space for us to build our own democracy and power.

It was formed after promises for development and engagement were made and after promises were broken. It was formed because the lies were put before the truth. In the years before the movement was formed many people, especially young men, had the experience of serious police harassment and violence during their everyday lives. They were often insulted and assaulted. For a number of the people that formed our movement it was this experience that led them to start to be critical of the new democracy. Later there were threats of forced removals to the human dumping grounds for outside of the city.

The final betrayal that led to the formation of the movement was when a piece of land that had long been promised to the residents of the Kennedy Road shack settlement for housing was sold to a local business man. We were told that the ANC was leading a revolution but profit was put before human needs. The commercial value of land was put before its social value. The living conditions in shack settlements were and still are life-threatening, as noted by the United Nations. There is hardly any water and sanitation, no road access, no refuse collections and no electricity. People are burnt to death in shack fires as they are forced to use candles to light and paraffin stoves to cook. These living conditions put us at all kinds of diseases especially tuberculosis and HIV. Our children continue to die from diarrhoea. Today we face a high risk from the Covid-10 pandemic.

Politicians thought they were owning us. Even today when they speak about us, they refer to black impoverished people as “our people”. They decide for us and go out to speak for us without us. They steal public funds at a huge scale. They have no sense of ubuntu (humanism) and do not appreciate the deep responsibility of being trusted to the positions of power.

This is why when we started our movement we insisted so strongly that we would think and decide for ourselves, and that we would build our own autonomous and democratic power. This is why we created our own philosophy and our politic. Later we discovered that most NGOs also thought that they should own us, decide for us and speak for us.

Both the government and these NGOs tried to show us to the world as criminals when we insisted on our autonomy. It became clear that for elites in and out of the state it was criminal for us to ask to be recognised as human beings, and to insist on our human dignity.

After 25 years of democracy shack dwellers still live in the mud like pigs, without access to basic services such as water, electricity and toilets. After 25 years what was supposed to become a rainbow nation witnesses regular xenophobia and violence against migrants and minority ethnic groups. After 25 years of democracy there are more people living in shacks than before, the poor are poorer than before and police violence is just as bad as it always was.

Our constitutional democracy is being undermined by some of those who claimed to have fought for this democracy. Like in Zimbabwe they wish to make democracy a ticket to reward only those who claimed to have been in the liberation army. The same people who claim to have been in an army of liberation are ow attacking migrants in the streets.

Our cities have been taken over by political mafias and gangster politicians in suits and ties. They have been prepared to kill in order to ascended to the positions of power. Some of them have blood on their hands. A number of our leaders have been assassinated. Two ANC leaders are now in jail for killing our leaders.

The price for land, for decent housing and the right to the city, is paid in blood. Brutal and unlawful evictions continue to terrorize our communities. The organized izinkabi (hitmen), the Land Invasion Unit of the eThekwini Municipality (Durban), the Red Ants of the City of Johannesburg and the Anti-Land Invasion unit of the municipality in Cape Town have subverted the law and use violence on landless people. This is what happens when the commercial value of land is placed before its social value. This is what happens when an accountable political leadership is replaced by gangster politicians. This is what happens when a democratic state is replaced by a police state.

So, what we have discovered was that the democracy achieved in 1994 was never for the impoverished people. The elites used the poor and the working class to win power, but they used us as ladders to climb up and replace the old white oppressors. Democracy became an opportunity for the politicians and elites to enrich themselves at the expense of millions of people of South Africa. The question of land, the question of the right to the cities and the question of building a participatory democracy were never resolved.

We were never allowed to participate in decision-making with regards to our lives and our communities. When we organize to insist on our right to participate in this democracy we were presented as “the third force” which means agents of foreign powers working with old apartheid forces. We were slandered and violently repressed by the state and the ruling party. Local politicians eventually became dangerous figures in our communities. Today people say sesiyawasaba amakhansela (we are afraid of councillors).

The ANC has betrayed the struggle for liberation and become new oppressors. For many years it was very difficult to get progressive people in other countries to understand this. Now, after the Marikana massacre in 2012, and the huge theft when Jacob Zuma was president, everyone understands this very well.

However, one thing to appreciate is that Abahlali communities have organised and built our own democracy from below. A democracy that recognises every human being. A democracy that respect every human life. A democracy that encourages participation in decision making. A democracy that celebrates women’s power and is committed to self-management.

This is what we call a living politic. It is the politic of truth and it is the politic of principle and courage. It is the politic that is thought from the ground about the reality of our lives. This politic is still not found in big philosophical books of our time. It is found and thought from the humility of ordinary men and women of our time. It is the politic of land. Some refer to it as ‘’life and death’’ as we come from mother earth and shall be buried in the earth when we die.

It is a politic that everyone can understand. It is the politic of decent housing for all. It is the politic of good schools, hospitals that heal, libraries, parks, safe streets and a decent income for all. It is the politic of water. Many of us live without sufficient water in shacks and in rural villages. If we are lucky to have one tape we share it in our hundreds, yet a middle class or rich person could have up to seven taps in one house in one family. We know water is a natural resource, a gift from God. But now the politicians, who want to make themselves as if they were gods, decide who should get it and at what cost. Electricity is also commodified. Mnikelo Ndabankulu, one of the founders of our movement, used to say that we do not need electricity but our lives need electricity.

During these fifteen years of our struggle the self-organisation of impoverished communities has been seen as some form of conspiracy. Sometimes we are accused of being funded by foreign agencies that aim to destabilize our hard-won democracy. This is done to justify violence on us. Organising outside the ruling party and the state and outside of the NGOs has cost us lives. Insisting that land, cities, wealth must be shared has cost us lives. We lost 18 activists between 2013 and 2018. This is why our members started to say that they are in a situation in which they have to accept that their commitment is to land or death. Many of us have scars just for insisting that impoverished people must count in our society.

Although we have deep scars and remain marginalised, today we have a place called home because of our own courage and inkani – which is a kind of strong determination. We have done this through occupying vacant and unused land. We have connected ourselves to water and electricity. We have built cooperatives and community gardens. We have built crèches for our children and access roads to our settlements. This is called democratic urban planning from below. What choices do you have when your own government has no time for its people? What choices do you have when your local councillor has become a dangerous figure to the same people that have elected him or her into power? What choices do you have when your local councillor spends their time chasing tenders and business deals?

Today we remain a people’s movement and the largest to have emerged in post-apartheid South Africa. It is the democracy that we have built ourselves that has given hope to many people in South Africa and abroad. The power of Abahlali and our living politic has carried the values and the treasure of our democracy and we work hard to build the future we want, while we defend our gains. It is important to repeat that the power of Abahlali and living politic has been paid in blood.

Ubuhlali, the philosophy of our movement, is our joy and our pride that can be used to advance democracy, to defend the constitutional democracy that was won in 1994 against a criminal elite in the ruling party and the state, to deepen and expand that democracy. After fifteen years of our struggle we remain committed to building radical democracy from below. We remain committed to the principle that the world and its wealth, cities and land must be shared. We remain committed to our right to participate in discussions and to make decisions in a way that is shared.

This is the mission that confronts our generation.

Let us work together in our communities, and across the world, to humanise the world.

I thank you.