The Movement of the Poor Turns Twenty on Saturday

2 October 2025
Abahlali baseMjondolo

The Movement of the Poor Turns Twenty on Saturday

Our movement was formed on 4 October 2005 by 32 elected representatives from 12 settlements. Today we have more than 180 000 members organised into more than 100 branches across five provinces.

In twenty years of struggle we have suffered and survived severe repression from the police, ruling party thugs, gangsters and the izinkabi. Many of our members have suffered assault, arrest and torture, and many lives have been lost in the course of our struggles.

In the early years of our struggle the municipality in Durban and the ANC tried to crush our growing movement with police harassment and violent and unlawful bans on our right to protest and speak to the media. We were beaten, arrested and tortured but we survived and we won the right to organise, protest and speak to the media.

In 2009 the ANC turned to ethnically organised mob violence, and then, from 2013, assassinations. We survived and grew in numbers and power although many people were driven from their homes and many lives were lost. There were very hard years as repression came in waves but we did not falter, we continued to stand for what is right and just and our movement grew.

In 2014 we dealt decisively with a case of corruption in our movement showing that we were very serious about building a politics of honesty and integrity.

In 2018 our open democratic processes enabled us to survive an attempt at capture by the Zuma faction of the ANC organised through the VBS bank.

We have won land for many thousands of people, won services, houses and changes in policies. We have defeated an attempt to turn to a highly reactionary urban agenda on the streets and in the Constitutional Court. We have confronted corruption and the politics of lying. We have directly opposed ethnic and xenophobic politics, including on the streets of Johannesburg. We have turned occupations into working communes in which communities manage themselves and conduct grassroots urban planning through democratic processes, produce food and establish and run political schools. We have built a democratic movement organised around open assemblies attended by hundreds of people. We have built relations with radical movements and intellectuals across the world.

Our members, making statements such as “ukwabiwa komhlaba noma ukufa” or “socialism or death”, have often lived, struggled and sometimes died with great courage. We have held to our principles and insisted that all our branches remain democratic if they wish to remain part of the movement.

When we began our struggle we were treated as waste, not as human beings. We were left to live like pigs in the mud and to burn in shack fires. We were denied the right to think and speak for ourselves, and to organise ourselves. We have built a movement in which our dignity is recognised and affirmed, a movement in which we can build our courage and power together, a movement that has given us a powerful voice on the national and international stage. We have dealt with problems that have arisen openly and decisively, always working towards healing whenever possible.

But while we have won large tracts of land most of our members continue to live in shacks. There has not been justice for most of our members who have been killed by the police, the anti-land invasion unit or the izinkabi. We are strong enough to be able to win land and make important interventions into national politics. But we are not strong enough to be able to defeat the monsters of corruption and capitalism in South Africa. We are not strong enough to build a country in which every person counts as a person and land, wealth and power are shared fairly.

Today we are working towards building a movement of communes and a global movement of movements. In South Africa we are working to unite the left, to rise above divisions and pettiness and connect the progressive membership-based organisations of the poor and the working class around areas of shared principle.

At 9:00am on Saturday we will gather at the Curries Fountain Stadium in Durban to celebrate twenty years of courage and struggle, to mourn our dead, affirm our commitment to freedom and reflect on what we have achieved and the road ahead.
In 1913 striking workers in mines, railways and municipal works, joined by sugar plantation workers, gathered on the land where the Curries Fountain Stadium would later be built. In the 1920s workers and poor people gathered at Curries Fountain under the red banner of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU). The Viva FRELIMO rally, organised by young students in the Black Consciousness Movement, was held there in 1974. In 1985 the United Democratic Front held a mass “Release Mandela” rally at the stadium. Later that year COSATU was launched in Durban with a mass rally at Curries Fountain. In 1992 Chris Hani addressed workers at the stadium on May Day. We celebrated our tenth anniversary at Curries Fountain in 2015. On Saturday we will, again, take our place in the stadium that has such a rich history in the struggle for freedom.

Sithi halala kwi butho labampofu!

Join us!

Thapelo Mohapi 084 576 5117
Mqapheli Bonono 073 067 3274
S’bu Zikode 083 547 0474