Sihle Sidisi (Joe Slovo), organiser of the Abahlali Haiti Solidarity Event, introducing the film

Sihile organised a really incredible evening. The discussion went on well into the night.

Two films about Haiti were screened. The visuals of the soldiers moving into the settlements, blocking the exits etc are images that look strikingly like what happened in settlements here almost exactly a year ago in response mass mobilisation although, of course, no one was killed then – but there was a police killing in the Siyanda road blockade on 4 December last year. When the films were finished there was a forest of hands up for people wanting to discuss the films. The discussion was excellent and very enthusiastic and focussed on how democratic national democracies could actually be in this world, why local and international agencies supposed to be ‘on the side of the people’ (from local NGOs to the UN) so ruthlessly and relentlessly stigmatize the politics of the poor as criminal, why Aristide was not speaking out in South Africa etc, etc. A few people in the hall had, despite a lack of access to all electronic media, been managing to follow the situation quite closely since Aristide was removed from office. People were tremendously excited to have been able to be part of the global day of action. Although the Haitian story is very depressing there is something encouraging in knowing that you are not alone and that the long fight back continues elsewhere, perhaps even everywhere.

M’du Hlongwa proposed that Aristide be contacted and invited to come to an Abahlali meeting and, if that is not possible, that an Abahlali delegation travel to Pretoria to try to meet him there. David Ntseng proposed that this film screening followed by a discussion become a monthly event so that people can learn more about struggles elsewhere.

It was also decided, following some of the themes that emerged in the discussions and on a suggestion from Zandile Nsibande, to follow up the screening of the films on Haiti with some raw video footage by Antonios Vradis from a combined protest on 3 December this year by Abahlali and the Cape Town Anti-eviction Campaign against what they saw as attempts by local left NGOs to exploit, dominate and speak for their struggles. This protest was viciously attacked as criminal and irrational in the media by a few local NGO affiliated leftists. In some instances the language of these attacks was blatantly racialised. The video footage shows the protest to have, in fact, been entirely peaceful and rational. It decisively shows the people that called Abahlali and the Anti-Eviction Campaign ‘criminal’ in the media to have been lying in a way that was directly complicit with the discourses deployed against the poor by the state. It was noted that there might be something similar (although obviously far more lethal and disasterous) in the U.N.’s willingness to make itself complicit with the U.S. attack on the politics of the poor in Haiti – ‘left’ and ‘right’ elites contending with each for a right to manage the poor temporarily unite and turn on the poor when self management is proposed. A hope was expressed, in a spirit of absolute solidarity for today’s global day of action, that future films about Haiti could also show the politics of the poor in Haiti as well as its repression rather than just its repression and commentry on that by outside experts/activists.

Bahlali bayanda.