Abahlali baseMjondolo in Court to Oppose Mass Eviction on the Dolphin Coast

17 October 2025
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Abahlali baseMjondolo in Court to Oppose Mass Eviction on the Dolphin Coast

Today at 9:00am Abahlali baseMjondolo will be in the Pietermaritzburg High Court to oppose an attempt at a mass eviction orchestrated by the Dolphin Coast Residents’ Association and brought to court by the ANC led KwaDukuza Municipality. This attack on the poor is an alliance between rich residents of the area and the ANC municipality who say that the poor people should not be able to live on what they call “prime land”.

It is clear that they do not see poor black people as human beings, as human beings who have the same right to live where they live. They see us as human waste, waste to be taken to the human dumping grounds in the wastelands outside the cities and far from the new urban forms of gated communities and malls that are developed up the North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal. They also see us as ‘criminals’, as a new kind of ‘Swart Gevaar’.

They want us to build, clean and secure their homes and businesses, and to care for their children and old people, but they do not want us to live near them.

The cities were built by poor black people, and now we are building the new urban forms outside the cities and yet just as we were driven away from the cities under apartheid, and again in the first decades after apartheid, now we are pushed away from the new urban forms. Today a black government acting with a multi-racial elite is trying to destroy our homes and communities and drive us into human dumping grounds which are far from work and schools, and without basic services such as water and sanitation or subsidised transport. They want to reduce people – living human beings – to mere statistics.

We are appalled by the way in which private security and the police – using drones and helicopters – work together to intimidate and repress us. They have failed to break the spirit of resistance and now that they have taken this battle onto the courts we will defend our homes and communities on that terrain.

The fact that a black government is being used to perpetuate these injustices is a betrayal of the struggles of our forefathers and mothers who did not fight for freedom and democracy for us to be subjected to the same brutal treatment by those who now claim to represent us.

This country was formed through the dispossession of land and every attempt by the dispossessed to find new land for living was met with violence and evictions. Black people were denied the right to the cities. We had hoped that a black government would understand that history. However, the sell-out leaders of the ANC – amabhunu amanyama- are perpetrating a modern form of apartheid. The rich of all races can buy land in gated communities but the poor – who are overwhelmingly black – are still deemed unfit to live near work, schools, clinics etc and are still deemed to be people who should be dumped on wastelands in the middle of nowhere. The ANC are doing to the poor what Verwoerd did to our foremothers and forefathers.

We call on all progressive forces, community organisations, and individuals to stand in solidarity with Abahlali baseMjondolo and resist these evictions on the Dolphin Coast. We will not be silenced. We will not be intimidated. We will continue to fight for our right to land, dignity, and decent lives.

You have the wealth, but we have the numbers.

You have guns, drones and helicopters but we have the power of the people.

We will not be intimidated.

We will not be moved.

We will not be silenced.

Contact:

Thapelo Mohapi 084 576 5117
Mqapheli Bonono 073 067 3274
Snenhlanhla Mcanyana 073 832 331