Our comrades are free! We feel like flying!

29 September 2021
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Our comrades are free! We feel like flying!

Moments ago, all charges were dropped against Lindokuhle Mnguni, Landu Tshazi and Ayanda Ngila who are now free after being detained in the notorious Westville Prison for six months.

The three comrades were arrested as part of the long-standing and often violent attempt to crush the eKhenena Occupation in Cato Manor by the eThekwini Municipality, the police and the local ANC – all working with people aiming to seize control of communally managed land for the purposes of making private profit.

Mnguni, Tshazi and Ngila were arrested and charged with the murder of Vuzi Shezi in Cato Manor on 16 March this year. Mqapheli (George) Bonono called an open meeting at the Diakonia Council of Churches on 21 March to establish the facts of what had happened. After this meeting he, Maphiwe Gasela and Siniko Miya were arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder a witness in the case against Mnguni, Tshazi and Ngila. Miya was not even at this meeting, and the participants in the meeting can attest to its actual content, including the contributions of Bonono and Gasela.

We have been told that the two witnesses in the case that was opened against Mnguni, Tshazi and Ngila planned and wrote their statements in the office of Detective Subramoney at the Cato Crest station. We have noted in a number of previous statements how the officers at the station have repressed the occupation in various ways.

The two witnesses were Mabongi Luthuli and Ntokozo Ngubane. Ngubane is part of an ANC family in the area. She has three brothers. One is a notorious hitman (inkabi). The other two carry guns and have often threatened people in the occupation and fired their guns as part of their threats. As we have explained before the local ANC has been trying by all means to get control of the land to use to break the commune and to turn the land into private property and use it to generate private profit. The Ngubane family has played a central role in this.

A few weeks ago, Luthuli and Ngubane both made sworn statements to the Investigating Officer, Officer Zulu, stating that they had lied in their original statements. Ngubane admitted that she was in fact in central Durban at the time at which Shezi was murdered in Cato Manor. Luthuli has admitted that she was also not at the scene when Shezi was murdered but was phoned by Mazwi Ndwandwe to go to the scene and to then make a false witness statement. Furthermore, the autopsy report showed that the murder of Shezi happened in a different way to that stated in the original witness statements.

We have been told that when Ndwandwe heard that the IO was going to dismiss the case as there was no evidence he begged him to keep the case, and even offered a bribe.

Ndwandwe has been a key player in the attempt to take over the occupation and in the arrest of the six. He pointed out the people that the police arrested and was often seen in the company of the police at the Durban Central Police Station. He is the person that, as we noted in a previous statement, arrived in the left spaces in Durban claiming to be on the run from political threats. He is from Umlazi, which is in Durban, but was previously unknown to all the left organisations in Durban.

When he suddenly arrived in the left spaces in Durban Ndwandwe claimed to be under threat as a result of his participation in a strike in Mandeni. However, we now know that he was not in Mandeni at the time of the strike. Before arriving in Durban, he had been in Cape Town where he had been funded to be in hiding by an organisation called Frontline Defenders, on the recommendation of an NGO called Tshisamani. He received money for a safe house on the basis of lies.

As we explained people in our movement and other left organisations began asking questions about Ndwandwe soon after his suddenly arrival in the left spaces in Durban. One reason for this was that he claimed at different times and in different meetings to be representing a number of different organisations (at least seven) that he had no mandate to represent. This included The Coalition of the Poor, the Azanian People’s Movement, Numsa, the United Front, Mayibuye and Ubunye bamaHostela. He also misrepresented himself to at least one NGO in Cape Town as someone that lives in the eKhenana Occupation and as a leader in the occupation and tried to raise money in the name of the occupation.

It is also important to note that Ndwandwe was very close to some of the people in R2K, which was at one point a progressive NGO. It is a matter of record that this NGO has been penetrated by state intelligence in the past. The people that Ndwandwe was close to in R2K are the same people that tried to misuse the names of all the membership based left organisations in the city – including our own – to organise a march in support of Zuma. Of course, the march failed.

At least three organisations in Durban considered Ndwandwe’s activities to be corrupt and at least two decided that, in their view, he must be working for state intelligence. Our view was that he was plainly an opportunist, but that it was also possible that he was working for state intelligence or the regressive NGOs that will not accept the right of the oppressed to organise themselves and have gone to great lengths to try by all means to capture popular organisations and to destroy those that cannot be captured.

At one time Ndwandwe asked to be given a space to build in eKhenena but his request was denied because he was contemptuous of democratic processes and tried to make personal deals with NGOs without any sort of democratic participation, mandate or oversight. However, he did enter into a personal relationship with Ngubane and often visited her at the occupation. He stopped coming to the occupation after Bonono and Gasela were released on bail and moved back to Umlazi.

Ndwandwe thought that the projects in the occupation such as the food and poultry farming, were externally funded and that he could access this money. In fact, they were self-organised and self-funded. He also thought, again incorrectly, that Mnguni and Gasela – both leaders of the occupation – were being paid.

When an attempt by three members of the Ngubane family to be elected into the leadership of the occupation failed they began to openly work with the local ANC and played a central role in the attempts by the ANC to take over the occupation. The ANC used the arrests to bring their own people on to the land and to frighten, isolate and divide the residents. They brought the residents izinhloko (cooked cow heads) and the Ngubane family started working towards opening an ANC branch. The Ngubane family are now supporting Siya Mkhize to become the new ANC councillor in the ward.

The arrests also damaged the commune in another way which is that all the money that had been made and that was made via the co-operative was used to support the comrades in prison. As a result, the co-operative eventually become bankrupt. Because of this, and the divisions caused by the ANC, some people stopped doing militant work and the garden declined. However, the poultry project and the political school are still working well.

The comrades on the occupation say that they were not overpowered but strategically retreated in the face of the repression coming from both the police and the local ANC. They say that they will push back now, and restore the full functioning of the commune.

Serious questions must be asked of the police and the prosecutor for arresting innocent people and keeping them in prison for more than six months. A serious injustice was committed as part of the repression aimed at breaking the building of a democratically organised community, a community that had subject to terrible violence from the state and local thugs connected to the ANC over a period of years.

But now we celebrate! Today people are over the moon! The residents will buy a sheep to welcome Mnguni, Tshazi and Ngila back to eKhenena.

Contact:

Thapelo Mohapi 074 774 4219
S’bu Zikode 083 547 0474
Nomsa Sizani 081 005 3686