A small library of policy, legal, theoretical, movement and other documents

A variety of potentially useful documents are archived on this page. They include policy and legal documents, academic articles and writings from struggles in other times and places. These documents are archived here because they (1) happen to be accessible in digital format and (2) have or could be, in various ways, a useful resource for some aspect of the work of some part of the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo. Fact (1) accounts for the fact that almost all the documents here are in English and that this collection has not escaped the limits of Eurocentricism. With regard to (2) that value can be in better understanding what needs to be faced, contested, defended or strived for. In other words some of the documents archived here are here so that we can better understand what we are opposing or so that we can better understand the contesting claims and values on the terrain in which we struggle to assert humanistic reason over the proclivity to violence, destruction and theft that is typical of both the profit calculus that drives capital and the simple hatred that drives the wider will of elites to expel the poor from the cities materially and intellectually. It is necessary to understand profit and hatred as well when they appear masked by apparently technocratic rationality as we do when they appear as the brute force of men with guns and bulldozers and dogs and teargas and stun grenades and sunglasses and water cannons and razor wire.

It is important to remember that only 120 people from the movement have been trained in computer skills so far and only a few people have internet access at work or via local libraries and so cyber space remains very marginal to the intellectual work of the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo (a discussion in a candle lit shack is at its centre). Moreover English is not, at all, the primary language of that work, and most of the intellectual resources available to the University are not written, let alone digitized, and take the form of popular memory of struggles from the Bhambatha rebellion to the Industrial & Commercial Workers' Union in the 20's and 30's, the Cato Manor Women's Riot in 1959, the Phondo revolt the following year, the trade union struggles from '73 and the struggles of civics in the cities and against the chiefs in the rural areas from the 80s, various popular theologies and, most of all (by a very clear distance), ongoing collective reflection on the contemporary experience of life and struggle. For written work produced within the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo click here.

A library of hard copy books is also being developed in the Kennedy Road settlement and some key texts (Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, Selma James etc) are being translated into isiZulu. As the translations are completed they will be archived on this site to ensure wider access.

South African Government Documents (Policy & Law)

Documents from Other Governments

Documents from Legal Actions Against Evictions in South Africa

Contemporary Research on South African Shack Settlements & Cities

Reports on Housing, Evictions and Repression in South Africa

Contemporary Research on Shack Settlements & Shack Dwellers' Struggles Elsewhere

Documents from and Critical Research on the Key Institutions of Contemporary Imperial Power Over Housing Policy (i.e the World Bank, UN Habitat, USAid etc)

Historical Research & Work of Historical Interest (South Africa)

Historical Research, Work of Historical Interest & Historical Policy Documents (Elsewhere)

Essays

General Theory

Theory & the City

Mike Davis's Planet of Slums and Responses

Other online archives with useful technical information, analysis & theory

Other movement & solidarity sites

Bloggs etc

Various Academic Articles & Other Documents in PDF

Leave a Reply