Women’s Day Arrests

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Release
Thursday, 09 August 2007, 2:38 p.m.

Women’s Day Arrests

This morning, on women’s day, Philani Zungu, deputy president of the Abahlali baseMjondolo shackdwellers’ movement, was arrested for ‘obstructing the police in the course of their duties’. Almost immediately, a contingent of around 50 women from Pemary Ridge boarded taxis to protest outside the Sydenham police station. Protesters waited for Zungu to arrive at the police station.

Recalling the series of events, Zungu said “after Bhekani Ntuli from the Housing Department, who we have wanted to talk to for days, drove by in the morning, the police came. They stopped, and asked me to raise my arms, and then to raise them higher, while they searched me. Then they said something I couldn’t understand. They finished searching me. We both took a step back. I thought it was over.”

Zungu continues, “the police officer, [whom Zungu identified as possibly being Smiso Ndlovu], asked what was the matter. I responded that I was trying to understand what he had said. The situation escalated with the arrival of another police officer, Singh, who intimidated me. He said “you’re going to get fucked up”. They asked whether I wanted them to arrest me. I said if they knew what they were doing. So they lifted me into the back of the van, and drove around fast so that I’d be knocked around.” Zungu was driven around for two hours before being bought to the Sydenham Police station where a vigorous protest was ongoing.

Supt Glen Nayager brought violence and reckless disregard to the proceedings. He arrived and instructed the police to disperse the crowd. He marched with other officers, chasing the unarmed protesters down the hill, turning a peaceful demonstration into a chase, in which tear gas was fired into the crowd. Two sisters, Thabiso Makamba and Andisiwe Makamba, were arrested by the police after being injured in the panic, but were later released without charge.

Justifying their disproportionate use of force, Nayager and other police called the protest “an inappropriate response”. This happened after repeated attempts to find out what had happened to Zungu, a number of calls to the Sydenham police station, and against a background of mounting community concern for Zungu’s wellbeing. The protest ended with Nayager promising to phone S’bu Zikode the next time a member of Abahlali was arrested.

Said S’bu Zikode, president of Abahlali baseMjondolo, “this is not the first time that the police have arrested Abahlali members on a national holiday. On Human Rights Day, the Kennedy Six were arrested. Today, on women’s day, it’s the same thing”. Said Mnikelo Ndabankulu, “it seems like Abahlali leaders will always under threat on holidays, days which ordinary citizens treat like a day of rest.”

In the course of the protest, renowned Harvard philosopher Nigel Gibson had his voice recorder confiscated, erased and returned.

“This is an issue about our common humanity,” explains Zungu. “I refuse to be treated like rubbish. The police always think that because we can’t afford nice clothes, we’re like rats. They stop us and search us, and the only reason they do is because they do not think we are human. But we have our dignity. The trouble is that as a poor man, I will always get into trouble like this, because I insist that they must treat me as a human being. They say this is bad attitude, but it is their contempt that lies underneath these arrests. I am worried. I will not give back my humanity, and this is the second arrest for my ‘attitude’.”

Zungu’s arrest happens against a background of misrepresentation and lies facing the communities in Pemary Ridge. Explains Zungu, “there have been people born in these shacks who have grown up and now have children of their own. But we have not been allowed to build new shacks since 1991. So we talked to Bhekani Ntuli from the eThekwini Housing Department and he said that it was okay for us to build houses. Three days later, people from Land Invasions told us that they were going to demolish our homes. Through the Legal Resources Centre, we told them what Ntuli had said and, a couple of days later, they apologised to us. But Ntuli still needs to come back and number the new shacks, and he hasn’t come yet.”

For further information, please contact:

Philani Zungu – 072 962 9312
S’bu Zikode – 083 547 0474
Zodwa Nsibande – 082 830 2707

For print quality pictures of the protest outside the Sydenham Police station click here.

For pictures of the new shacks click here and here.

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Abahlali baseMjondolo
Emergency Press Release
12:30, 9 August 2007

At 10:00 a.m. this morning Philani Zungu, deputy president of Abahlali baseMjondolo, was arrested in the Pemary Ridge settlement. A meeting had been scheduled with the eThekwini Housing Department. However they arrived with the Sydenham SAPS who immediately went to Philani and demanded to search him. He asked them why they were searching him and was immediately arrested for ‘resisting arrest’. This is the same spurious charge on which he was arrested on 12 September last year. In that instance the real purpose of the arrest was to stop Philani and S’bu Zikode from participating in a debate on iGagasi FM. Philani was severely assaulted in the Sydenham Police station that night and the charges against him were dropped a few days later. Abahlali is currently suing the SAPS for that arrest and assault and has marched on the Sydenham Police station in protest at the racism, violence, political authoritarianism and systemic criminality of its head, the notorious Glen Nayager.

This morning’s arrest was linked to the building of new shacks in the Pemary Ridge settlement. The shacks were built in late July this year. The Housing Department and the Land Invasions Unit were informed about the new shacks by Philani by way of the letter pasted in below. There are some pictures of the new shacks here and here. The new shacks were built to accommodate people who used to live in the Juba Place settlement and who have been accommodated in Pemary Ridge since they were illegally made homeless by the eThekwini Municipality in late November last year (read more about this here and here) and people who have lived in the settlement for a long time and need more space for growing families.

The Housing Department, in the person of an official named Bhekani Ntuli, initially accepted the logic of Philani’s letter and agreed to accept the new shacks. However this was over ridden by a man in the Land Invasions Unit named Steyn. The Land Invasions Unit threatened to demolish the new shacks on two consecutive occasions earlier this week but the new shacks were saved by a mix of negotiations, popular pressure and legal support from the Legal Resources Centre.

The shacks still stand but Philani was arrested this morning in a clear attempt at intimidation. He was arrested at 10 but only arrived at the Sydenham Police station at 12 although it should have taken, at most, 15 minutes to reach the station from Pemary Ridge. It is not yet known if he has been assaulted in the two hours that it took from him to be bought from the settlement to the station.

Abahlali mobilised quickly and mounted a vigorous protest outside the Sydenham Police station which was eventually broken up when Nayager arrived on the scene. There were then protests elsewhere, including on Kennedy Road, where two others were arrested.

Arrests followed by protests followed by police violence have become a regular part of life on public holidays for Abahlali. No doubt public holidays are chosen to make these intimidatory arrests because lawyers and journalists are not easily available.

A full press release will be issued later on. In the meantime please contact the following people who are on the scene for further information:

S’bu Zikode 0835470474
Mnikelo Ndabankulu 0735656241
Zodwa Nsibande 0828302707
Raj Patel 0827250179

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Letter from the Pemary Ridge Committee to the Departments of Housing & Land Invasions

Pemary Ridge Development Committee
Reservoir Hills, Ward 23
29 July 2007

The Departments of Housing and Land Invasions
To whom it may concern

As the Pemary Ridge Development Committee, we hereby forward our request on behalf of our Pemary Ridge shack dwellers.

In terms of your slum clearance programme, you decided to make a rule for us that you count the number of existing shacks and record their sizes. You told us to remain in these shacks, and not to expand them or build new shacks, until a low-cost housing programme comes to our turn.

We have obeyed your rule for the last 16 years. We have obeyed your rule since 1991 after shacks were removed from Lot No: 3780 and Lot No: 3266. The number of structures and their sizes was kept the same even while we experienced fire disasters in Lot No: 3261 and Lot No: 3259. We obeyed your rule even though it is natural that people expand. It is natural that people grown from children to become adults and to become parents. We do not have control on that but God.

Please be advised that the same thing that happens to all communities has been happening in our community for the past 16 years. Also some community members have passed away and some have moved out of the community and have handed their houses on to other people.

In addition, we have homeless people from Juba Place who were made homeless by your Departments when you demolished the Juba Pace settlement on 11 November 2006. They have been staying in the existing structures in Pemary Ridge since then causing serious overcrowding.

We have captured the information on the eThekwini Housing Programme. We know that no land has yet been made available for our low-cost housing. We know that you are still on the level of negotiating with the land owners. We know that in terms of your time frame your main target for providing housing in KZN is now 2015.

For the reasons mentioned above we therefore took responsibility to make a plan for the next 7 years. We have allowed additional shacks to be constructed in Pemary Ridge to accommodate those you who made homeless in Juba Place and those who have grown and become parents.

We hereby request you to renumber and register the new homes, taking into consideration that we have complied with your rules for 16 years before deciding that we have to make our own plan for the next 7 years.

Should you object to this request please advise us why and state your reasons in writing.

Yours faithfully
Chairperson, Raymond Philani Zungu (0729629312, rphilani@yahoo.com)
Secretary, Nokwanda Mjanyana

Democracy in My Experience
Widely published and quoted article by Philani Zungu

14 August 2007

People have different definitions of democracy.

Some people say that democracy means freeing everyone to do whatever they want, regardless of rule or controls, with no instructions or boundaries, no importance to whether what is done is wrong or right.

Some people say democracy is the power of the state to decide things, acting in the interests of those who hold state power, its behaviour designed to suit their demands. In this vision, society is always in a position of compliance with orders from the state.

Some people say democracy is about rights. After the Freedom Charter was created, people came to know about their particular rights. The more they understood their rights, the freer they became. We never expected to be
disappointed in turning these rights into reality. But we were.

Some people say democracy is for all of us – as society. They say it is a reason to improve and protect our lives. It is equality, whereby all should participate in building a better society and achieving a better life for all.

Let me share my experience of democracy since 1994 as a shackdweller in Durban.

I stayed with my mother, step- father and my younger brother in a small house, four by four meters. We were tightly squeezed up. The eThekwini Department of Housing decided that we could no longer build or extend shack
structures. We had no choice. If we built, they would come and demolish the same day, or soon after.

I also felt the shame of women giving birth in the shacks. This they did after not attending clinic for a long time, because nurses shout at them, and when they are admitted, are not being attended to in good faith.

New to unemployment, my parents had no finance to support us; so I had to come from school and look for work, such as car washing and gardening.

I had to stop school at grade 9. When I was 20 years old, I needed to be independent, so I tried to build a house. It was demolished, and inside it was everything I owned. I was was assaulted by the land invasion unit, and had to be admitted to Addington Hospital. I was denied a right to housing.

This happened purely because it was already decided for me, in advance,without any redress or consultation, how I could live.

I was arrested for demonstrating against the lack of delivery, and lack of of consultation in 2005.

In 2006, I was arrested again. This time, I was being searched by a police officer on the way to a radio interview. I asked why I was being searched. It was a relevant question to ask, in case I might have some information to assist on a particular case. But the policeman replied that a black man is always a suspect. And then they arrested me. This time I was arrested for asking why I could not be treated like a human being, with rights, in a democracy. Once again I was assaulted, this time in the Sydenham Police station.

In 2007 I was arrested for not agreeing to treated like an animal by the police. The police had come to my home and demanded to search me after I had built myself a new home so that I and my wife and child could move out of my mothers’ house where I had lived for 16 years. I had nothing to hide. I had written a letter to the Land Invasions Unit and the Housing Department telling them that I was going to build my own house and why. I just asked the police why they wanted to search me and their response was arrest. Formal warnings were issued by the Sydenham police Station.

I can see that in the future, I’m expected to accept the unacceptable. That is the reality of democracy of the state and democracy of human rights in my experience. My only remaining hope for an acceptable future is hope in the democracy of society.

Philani Zungu is Deputy President of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shack dwellers’ movement with members in close to 40 settlements in South Africa.

For more information on the 2006 arrest and assault of Philani Zungu click here and for more information on the 2007 arrest click here.