March on Mlaba – Final Press Release (& Updates on Police Attack & Aftermath)

This is what (state) democracy (really) looks like in South Africa….

Update 14: January 2010 – There is now some video footage of the march (taken before the police attack) on YouTube here and here.

Update 13: January 2009 – The Human Rights Watch 2009 World Report makes specific mention of the violent attack by the Sydenham Police on this peaceful Abahlali march in its Chapter on South Africa. The Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions also condemned the Sydenham Police for this attack, and other actions against Abahlali, and called for a commission of inquiry into the Sydenham police in a report on housing rights in Durban issued last year.

Update 12: 29 January, 2008 – All charges against the Abahlali 14 were dropped in the Durban Magistrate's Court today after the prosecutor told the Magistrate that "there is no possibility of a successful prosecution in this matter." As the 50 or so Bahlali exited the court Mam Kikine, who was one of the 14, and who was shot 5 times in the back with rubber bullets at close range during the March on Mlaba in September last year, asked "Uphi uNayager nezinja zakhe?"

Update 11: The case has been remanded till 28 January 2008. There is an article on the march (and its violent repression) in groundWork's December newsletter.

Update 10 13/11/2007: The next court appearance for the Sydenham 14 will now be on 28 November 2007 in the regional court. Also, Mashumi Figlan's response to the police attack on the march has finally been loaded onto this site and the new issue of iBandla koweZindlu is all about the march and its repression.

Update 9: Click here for the minutes of the meeting held with Church Leaders to discuss the violent police attack on the march, here for an article on the police attack and the debate about dangers to democracy in South Africa by Stephen Friedman, here for a follow up article by Na'eem Jeenah and here for the full exchange of letters between COHRE and City Manager Michael Sutcliffe.

Update 8: Only 6 days after the criminal police attack on the Abahlali march police attacked a protest against the illegal eviction of 50 families who have been living in Sea Cow Lake for 8 years wounding still more people and arresting a further eleven. The municipality tried to justify their illegal evictions in the name of the Slums Act. The Sydenham 14 appeared in court on 2 October and the case was remanded for further police investigation. The next court date is 13 November.

Update 7: Click here to see the first batch of pictures to have come through the net of water cannon damage and police confiscation and deletion, here to read Police Violence in Sydenham, 28 September, 2007: A Testimony by Church Leaders, here to read An Open Letter to Obed Mlaba & Mike Sutcliffe by the Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions (Geneva), here to read a report on these two statements in the Sunday Tribune, here for some newspaper pictures of the march and here for the article in the Weekly Gazette.

Update 6 (Sunday, midnight): Click here to read S'bu Zikode's response to the attack on the march – Silencing the Right to Speak is Taking Away Citizenship and here and here for responses from Jacques Depelchin (DRC) and Anilliah Masaraure (Zimbabwe), here for a short solidarity statement from Peoples' House in Turkey and here for a solidarity statement from the people of Dikmen Valley, Ankara, Turkey.

Update 5 (Sunday evening): Numerous people have suffered minor injuries and the list of people who have received or who are receiving hospital treatment includes 2 people from Kennedy Road, 2 people from Joe Slovo (Durban), 1 person from Isaka ('Maritzburg) and 1 person from eNkwalini. Ma Kikine, 53, of Joe Slovo has been shot 5 times in the back and once on the back of the left arm at close range with rubber bullets. She is obviously frail and was obviously in great pain but did not receive any medical attention while in custody.

Update 4: Click here for the Memorandum that Mlaba didn't bother to come and collect, here for an article in the Independent on Saturday, here for an eyewitness account by Mark Butler, here for comment from Mnikelo Ndabankulu, here for comment from Brother Fillipo Mondini (here for a response by Jacques Depelchin), here for An open letter to Lindiwe Sisulu from 'Citizens Against Privatization' in New Zealand and here for an article in the Italian magazine Carta.

Update 3 (21:00): All 14 comrades have been released after a lawyer and other forms of pressure enabled an emergency bail hearing. No one was assaulted while in custody. They are due in court on 2nd October. They have, ironically (but typically), been charged with two of the many crimes committed by the police today – violating the gatherings act and public violence.

Update 2 (13:40): Mnikelo Ndabankulu has just been arrested. He went to visit the arrested comrades and was immediately arrested himself on arrival at the police station, bringing the number behind bars to 14. This type of action will make it very difficult for AbM to support those inside effectively. Lawyers have been informed that bail is being denied and that the 14 will have to appear in court on Monday to request bail.

Update 1 (12:30): Once again an entirely peaceful protest has been broken up, without warning, by an unprovoked police attack. Once again a number of people have been injured. At least 13 people have been arrested on the command of Glen Nayager despite assurances (below) that they would be given the right to pray and march peacefully. They are currently languishing in jail while Nayager, and his bosses, mock the constitution. But the good news is that while the police were rioting in Sydenham an interdict was won in the Durban High Court preventing Ricky Govender from demolishing the home of Mr & Mrs. Pillay and from intimidating or assaulting them. (Click here to read reports on the interdict in the Mercury and the Post.)

Mass March on Mlaba on Friday 28 September 2007: Final Press Release

Across South Africa shack dwellers are rejecting forced removals and asserting their right to the city in a series of popular mass protests unparalleled in post-apartheid South Africa. There have been thousands of protests in the last few years. This week has seen mass action all over the country. On Tuesday 5 000 shack dwellers from the Joe Slovo settlement in Cape Town went to the High Court to register their intention to oppose Lindiwe Sisulu's planned forced removals. Members of Abahlali baseMjondolo were there in support. Yesterday in Johannesburg people from the Protea South, Kliptown, Thembelihle, and Thembisa settlements marched on Sisulu’s offices in Pretoria. Tomorrow thousands of shack dwellers will march on Mlaba in Durban.

There is no conspiracy behind this national wave of mass protest. Most times there is no donor or NGO support. Most times we are on our own and have to stand up for ourselves because we are being treated as if we do not belong in this country. The explanation for what is happening to us is very simple. The ‘experts’ and the rich and the politicians speak about us and for us. They see no reason to speak to us. Therefore decisions are taken for us and not with us. The results of this are clear. We are being denied basic services in the cities. In many settlements thousands of people find themselves sharing one tap or one toilet. Some settlements must live through 3 or 4 fires in one year because electricity is no longer installed. We do not suffer like this because delivery takes time or because money is short. We suffer like this because it has been decided that our settlements must be eliminated and so services are being withheld. When ‘housing delivery’ comes it is not what we fought for and it is not what we were promised. When ‘delivery’ comes some are being made homeless and others are being forcibly removed to rural ghettos like Delft in Cape Town and Park Gate in Durban. The word for this is oppression. It is therefore clear that we have to rebel just to survive. As S'bu Zikode famously said “The Third Force is all the pain and the suffering that the poor are subjected to every second in our lives.” There is only one hidden cause of these protests – it is that the suffering of the poor is hidden to those who have decided that they are too high to need to speak to ordinary people.

Tomorrow's march has the support of a large number of churches and will begin at 9:00 a.m. with a mass prayer meeting in the Kennedy Road Hall to be led by Bishop Purity Malinga from the Methodist Church. The march will then proceed up Kennedy Road and left into Clare Road and straight into Randles Road. It will stop at the corner of Randles Road and Sparks Roads where another mass prayer meeting will be held before the memorandum is read to Mayor Mlaba.

Our comrades in the Combined Harare Resident's Association have issued a statement in support of the march.

Mike Sutcliffe has given written permission for the march. Glen Nayager has met with Abahlali to assure us that his officers will act to support the right to march. We have elected and trained 1000 marshals. There has been intense mobilization all week and final mobilization meetings will take place this evening. These meetings will include an all night meeting in Kennedy Road, an all night meeting in Empangeni and a film screening and discussion in Foreman Road.

It is rumoured that Mlaba will send Ward 25 Councillor Yakoob Baig to collect the memorandum. Yakoob Baig was buried on 14 September 2005. Thousands of people have participated in the discussions that have flowed into the development of our carefully worked out memorandum. We do not intend to give it to a ghost. We are finished with Baig, just as we are finished with Bachu and Dimba and all the rest of the councillors. They have never spoken for us and we took a decision, two years ago, to speak for ourselves.

While Abahlali are marching through Clare Estate and Sydenham the policy making elites will be meeting with the business elites in the ICC for their 'Housing Summit'. While they plan how to make money in the name of the housing crisis we will be marching. On the Esplanade an urgent application will be heard in the High Court. It has been brought by Abahlali to interdict the notorious Ricky Govender from bulldozing the tin shack in which the Pillay family have lived for the last 16 years in Motala Heights. Last week we had a mass meeting in Motala Heights. The people unanimously asked us to march on Govender next. We have heard their cry.

The press statement below has been updated with the new demands that have emerged in the discussions in each branch and affiliated settlement leading up to the march and with the new settlements where people have decided to join the march.

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Abahlali baseMjondolo to March on Obed Mlaba for Land & Housing in the City on 28 September 2007

We will march on Mayor Obed Mlaba on Friday 28 September 2007. We will leave from the Kennedy Road settlement at 9:00 a.m. and will, once again, march to Cllr. Yakoob Baig’s offices at the corner of Sparks Road and Randles Road where Mayor Mlaba has been asked to meet us.

The City gives us no choice but to march. If we just carry on with our ordinary lives our ordinary lives will continue to consist of being burnt in the fires, being raped when we try and find a place to go to the toilet in the night, having our homes demolished and either being left homeless or being forcibly removed to rural human dumping grounds like Park Gate far from where we work, school, shop and pray and far from the libraries and sports facilities that we use. The city flagrantly breaks the law when it carries out its illegal demolitions and evictions. When we try to speak we are beaten, arrested and slandered. The basic rights to free speech and association guaranteed to us in the law are just denied to us. Our requests for meetings for us to be able to discuss our future are not honoured. For instance on 28 June we received a fax from Cogi Pather, the Head of Housing, stating that “The Municipality is not keen to enter into a protracted debate with a large group of people.” We are treated as if we do not belong in this country. We are treated as if the law is not for us, as if the land is not for us, as if the electricity is not for us, as if the schools are not for us, as if the city is not for us. This is not democracy. This is not justice. The City gives us no choice but to march. We will march under the banner of ‘Land & Housing in the City!’

Operation Vuselele & Our Demands

We have elected a team of march organisers who have been setting up meetings in settlements everywhere. We have a large number of mass meetings scheduled in other settlements for next week at which support for this march will be discussed and so is likely that support for the march will continue to grow. Each settlement, group of people in each settlement or organisation that decides to support the march are discussing their list of demands. Next week representatives of all the settlements and organisations will meet and we will draw up a collective memorandum. But there is already strong support for the following demands to be made to Mayor Mlaba:

• An immediate moratorium on all evictions, demolitions and forced removals
• An immediate moratorium on the eviction and harassment of street traders
• An immediate commitment to seriously explore the possibility of upgrading rather than relocating each settlement and to undertake this exploration in partnership with each settlement
• An immediate moratorium on the selling of government owned land to private developers
• A commitment to the expropriation of privately owned land (e.g. Moreland land) for collective, social housing
• An immediate moratorium on the exclusion of the poor from schools and universities
• An immediate commitment to breaking with the current undemocratic form of development and to accepting the right of people to co-determine their own future.
• The immediate building and maintenance of sufficient numbers of toilets in all settlements (for our dignity, to keep us safe from disease and to keep women safe at night)
• The immediate provision of electricity in all settlements (to stop the fires that have plagued us since the City stopped providing electricity to shack dwellers in 2001)
• The immediate provision of adequate water in all settlements
• The immediate provision of refuse removal in all settlements
• The immediate provision of support for community run creches
• The immediate recognition that all settlements will experience natural growth, especially as children grow up, and that this requires existing shacks to be expanded and new shacks to be built
• An immediate explanation as to what happened to the R10 billion Phoenix East housing development promised by Obed Mlaba after we marched on him on 14 November 2005
• An immediate explanation as to what happened to the piece of land adjacent to Loon Road promised to the Foreman Road settlement for housing by Obed Mlaba when he visited the settlement while campaigning for the 2000 local government elections.
• An immediate investigation into the rampant corruption in the drawing up of housing lists
• An immediate investigation into the activities of the notorious Pinetown gangster landlord Ricky Govender (including his violent intimidation, illegal evictions and alleged cut rate purchase of publicly owned municipal land with the aim of evicting shack dwellers and building high-cost housing for his private profit)
• An immediate investigation into the activities of the notorious police officer Glen Nayager

We also have demands to the provincial government:

• The Slum Elimination Act is immoral and illegal. Our settlements are communities to be developed not slums to be 'eliminated'. This Act must be scrapped immediately.
• There must be immediate action to prevent farm workers from being evicted and harassed.
• There must be immediate action to prevent the enclosure of land for private game reserves.
• There must be immediate action to prevent the eThekwini & Msunduzi Municipalities from continuing to carry out illegal evictions
• We opposed the hosting of the 2010 World Cup on the grounds that we couldn't afford to be building stadiums when millions have no houses. But now that it is coming there must be an immediate commitment to declare that the World Cup will be an ‘100% Evictions Free World Cup’ all across the province. i.e. That there will not be any evictions of shack dwellers or street traders.

We will also use the platform created by this march to publicly state our full support for the people of Joe Slovo, in Cape Town, who are heroically resisting forced removal to the human dumping ground of Delft, and for the people of Khutsong. Since 2004 shack dwellers across the country have been protesting against evictions, forced removals, failure to provide even the most basic services to settlements and the completely undemocratic form of development that ‘delivers’ us out of the cities. All of these struggles began in confined corners but now we are getting to know each other. We will stand together and fight together. We have no choice. Everywhere we are under attack.

Support for the March

So far people from the following settlements and organisations have confirmed that they will attend this march:

Durban: Kennedy Road, Foreman Road, Jadhu Place, Puntan’s Hill, Burnwood Road, Banana City 1 & 2, Joe Slovo, Crossmore, Arnett Drive, Pemary Ridge, Shannon Drive, Kenville, eMgudule

Pinetown: Motala Heights, New eMmaus, Mpola

Pietermaritzburg: Ash Road, Eastwood, iSaka (Mkondeni), The White House

Port Shepstone: eGamalakhe

Rural Network: Babanango, Newcastle, Pongola, Utrecht, Richmond, Greytown, Melmoth, Empangeni & eNkwalini

Landless Peoples’ Movement: Pongola, Eston

Socialist Students’ Movement & other UKZN students: UKZN, Durban

Various churches and clergy: Durban & Pietermaritzburg

Comment on this March

Mnikelo Ndabankulu 073 5656 241
Shamita Naidoo 0764940965
Lousia Motha 0781760088
Philani Zungu 0729629312

Comment on shack dwellers' struggles in Jo'burg & Cape Town

For comment on shack dwellers' struggles in Jo'burg contact Maureen Mnisi from the Landless Peoples’ Movement on 082 337 4514. For comment on shack dwellers' struggles in Cape Town contact Mzwanele Zulu from the Joe Slovo Task Team on 076 3852369 or Ashraf Cassiem from the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign on 076 1861408.