ISiyanda branch celebrates Electricity Installation, its Sixth Anniversary & Re-launches its Branch

Friday, 27 March 2015
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

ISiyanda branch celebrates Electricity Installation, its Sixth Anniversary & Re-launches its Branch

It is with great pleasure that impoverished people on our own can achieve what was thought to be impossible sometime ago. It is with great pleasure that Abahlali can organise to build our power from below to use the state to develop and transform the lives of the impoverished without seeking permission from politicians or giving up our autonomy to the ruling party.

The neglected community of Siyanda VN Naik, just like many other Abahlali communities, has been denied the right to land and housing. We have been denied the right to essential services such as water and sanitation and electricity. When we started our movement in 2005 these services were denied to all shack dwellers in Durban. The government claimed to provide water but there would be a few taps for settlement of thousands of people. They claimed to provide sanitation but this only existed on paper. They openly refused to provide us with electricity claiming that our settlements, even when they were more than 30 years old, were ‘temporary’.

Because of our struggle the state has been forced to start providing more access to water and to being providing electricity and toilets too – something that was previously denied. However they will also try and only provide the fruits of our struggle to settlements that remain loyal to the ANC, and through local ANC structures. Therefore we continue to be denied essential services as a punishment for speaking out against injustices, inequalities, corruption and indignity.

This Sunday, 29 March 2015 the Siyanda branch will be celebrating the sixth year anniversary of having collectively joined Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA. This is an important year for the whole movement as we will be celebrating our tenth year anniversary in few months time. The celebration comes with some sizable achievements for the Siyanda branch like the delivery of waterborne ablution, the Settlement Database, community initiated projects such as gardens and crèches run by Co-operatives. All of these projects in one branch are run by mostly women.

On Sunday Abahlali will also be launching the electricity project that has begun already in Siyanda. The installation of electricity in the Siyanda settlement is a major achievement. Our movement will be celebrating after years of our children, men and women were being killed and maimed in fires as a result of the city’s failure to electrify shack settlements. We all know that Durban City Council has been the only municipality in the country that has had a deliberate policy Not to electrify shack settlements.

Today we thank our long struggle, of ten years, to demand electrification for all. We also thank our “Operation Khanyisa’ campaign which is the well organised campaign to arrange safe electrification connections from below. This campaign was started by our APF comrades in Johannesburg. Eskom, the police and the media have no problem when impoverished people are denied access to electricity and left to burn in the fires. Yet when we take matters into our own hands, in the name of justice and in defence of our communities and our lives, Eskom, the police and the media call us criminals.

It is only now we are told that this deadly policy of denying electricity to shack dwellers is being reviewed in Durban and that the city is rolling out electricity as a pilot project. Of course they will never give credit to Abahlali for this important breakthrough.

But it must be noted that the ruling party has voted against the installation of electricity in Siyanda when the motion was put forward in a council meeting. They took this position simply because Siyanda is an Abahlali branch. But despite this attempt by the council to oppose human development we still got the project going ahead. When organisation and persistence it is still possible to use the state machinery to people’s favour without having to bow to politicians, there is a trick though.

The event starts at 10:00am on the 29 March 2015 at Siyanda Community Centre next to VN Naik School.

Contact:

Mamkhize Nxumalo Siyanda brach Chairperson on 078 4332719
Thembani Ngongoma Siyanda Deputy Chairperson on 084 6139772