Interviews with System Cele, Mashumi Figland, Louisa Motha & David Ntseng

The three interviews here are excepted from a paper by Kate Gunby that looks at why former ANC supporters are now critical of the government. To read the full paper, with the other interviews, Kate’s analysis and the proper layout click here.

They Don’t Even Know How It Would Feel To Live In a Shack
System Cele interview 21 November 2007

System Cele is in her late twenties and a mother of four. She has lived in the Kennedy Road settlement for over 18 years. Her contribution to the people of Kennedy Road started years ago, before the creation of Abahlali, through volunteering. She has been a member of Abahlali since the beginning, and her family is, “supportive, although they don’t attend the meetings with me, at home I’m the only one who goes.” System has lost her front teeth to police brutality. Her family has said, “‘please stop going, you’re not getting anything, you’re not working, what are they doing for you?’” but she explains, “I’m not doing it for people, I’m doing it for myself because I’m a parent. I hate living in these conditions, the life I’m living here with my children, we deserve decent houses.”

It is clear to System that the ANC government is failing to help the people who live in informal settlements. She is disappointed, though that doesn’t mean she hates the ANC, just they way the party is working.

I think there is nothing wrong with the ANC itself, but it’s the people who are leading it. I think it’s the greediness, money is the thing that divides people. The councilor is given the money to do projects, and the money just vanishes into their pocket…. The people from the region were surprised because they thought there was something going on with the government because the councilor is given money to do projects in the community, and they are surprised that there is no development.

It seems that the poor are not a high priority for the government, and that their conditions can be easily hidden from the rest of the world.

I see no action of development. I think they are too busy preparing for 2010, we will hear on the radio that the cement it poured and the stadium is not finished yet. They forgot about us. Even the people coming from the other countries, they won’t show them here, they’ll just show them inside the city where they will stay at hotels, they won’t show them here because it will be embarrassing because they went to the other countries and said they are doing their job, they are taking care of the poor. … The thing that’s annoying us the most is that the people in government positions, they go to different countries saying they are going to deliver to our people, they are going to help us, they get the money and we do not know what they are doing with that money. They don’t come back to us to give the report, how they are doing, what they told the people from other countries what sort of solution they would be doing, you will see them in television and they won’t even mention the names of the people living in the shacks, they will talk about the people living in the shack, they don’t even know how it would feel to live in a shack. They talk about us, about our needs, but they’re doing nothing for us. So that’s why we’re saying don’t talk about us, talk to us, because we are the one who are suffering.

Accountability, follow-through, and listening to the people are top priorities for System, but party politics have not been satisfactory.

There is nothing happening. When they’re campaigning, they can promise everything, not only this government, every political party, they all promise the same things, but they don’t deliver. That’s why we say we don’t care who the leader is or which political party, as long as they are going to deliver…. Here in Kennedy we are blaming the ANC because the majority of Kennedy road are members of ANC, so we talk politics about the ANC. I think everybody living here in the shacks are Abahlali baseMjondolo because we all because though we all come from different areas and different political parties, so we formed the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement. Not because we were fighting ANC, because in the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement people come from different political parties. So it’s not that we are against ANC, even the people from other parties they are sick and tired of the councilors who lied to them, promised them, and they deliver nothing.

The members of Abahlali want the government to sit down and really listen to them, and on a regular basis. They began marching, “because the councilor didn’t want to come to meetings with us.” However the ANC seems to only care about shack dwellers at election time, and tends to bring small gifts to try to buy support.

They only come to us when they want our vote. We go through the fires, the wind, rain, anything because our homes are made of cardboard, plastic. They know that if they come do something for us they can get the majority to vote for them. They will do something for us. They came with biryani and juice, but after the election they forget about us…. They are buying the people with biryani and those itchy blankets, the gray ones, because they know that poverty is very high in our community of people who live in the shacks. So if you come with the food, the blankets, and the clothes, it will be like you have come with the heaven, you’ve done a good thing. … They say, ‘leave Abahlali, join ANC.’ People can be easily taken because they are poor.

Even though the government has yet to give in to Abahlali’s demands, the movement has made significant progress in giving shack dwellers the voice that all citizens in a democracy are supposed to have.

Before, even though we had the right, we were not allowed to speak for ourselves. People from the shacks were ignored when they went to the official’s office, they just ignored you. Now we are able to talk to our government, we are able to talk to any official we want to talk to because we are a community.

Still, the ANC remains blind to the reasons behind Abahlali’s actions, or perhaps in denial of their responsibilities, and tries to silence the people of Abahlali.

If you are marching they think you are mad, they don’t understand, they think we act like uneducated people. But we are not mad, our mothers are not mad, our grannies are not mad, they are not going to the street and jump for nothing. … We go with the memorandum with our demands and to show them that we are not fighting. But they don’t understand what we’re doing, they just hit us. When we march at the end they just beat us.

Abahlali, They Are Speaking the Truth All the Time
Lindelani (Mashumi) Figlan interview 15 November 2007

Mashumi Figlan was born in the Eastern Cape in 1970, and grew up there. At young age he became inspired to speak out against the apartheid government.

One day, I think it was 1982, I was still young, I was sitting on the shade behind the room of my father, and my father was there. So I saw the soldiers coming from down near the river, coming up. Then after that I look at those people and my father was just puffing that pipe, so the soldiers when they passed, they looked at my father, they asked him, ‘why you puffing the dagga?’ and my father was very old, and he said, ‘no, I can’t puff any dagga, I’m too old now, I’m just puffing tobacco.’ And then, they decided to take that pipe, they threw that tobacco down, then they noticed that there was no dagga there. And after that they say, ‘why are you sitting here when some other people in that area they are fighting?’ And my father just told them, ‘I’m not the type for fighting all the time, I like what is known as peace.’ And one of the soldiers, and I think that guy was about 18 years, 21 years, he slapped my father, and he was a wise guy. And my father ask him, ‘why you slapping me?’ and that guy said, ‘are you chicken?’ I think that guy, he was not more than 20 years, less than 20 years, I think my father at that time he was 72 years. And after that, he took a shovel and gave it to my father. And I was crying and my mother was in church, and I was crying and running straight to my mother and told my mother they are hitting my father. … Then my mother told me, “It’s like that in South Africa. They can hit you anytime they like, they can shoot you anytime they like’. And I asked myself when I was on my bed, ‘why do they do this?’

Then after that I went to school the next day and narrated the story to other young girls, young guys, and they just told me that, ‘listen, there is a man coming who’s going to take over this country, his name is Mandela. And that man, once he takes over there will be no one going to hit another one. And everybody’s going to be safe. And everybody is (we were still young) going to have a car, cows, goats, sheep, and all those things.’ I was so inspired. I decided to ask my father about Mandela. ‘Sorry, daddy, who’s Mandela?’ Then my father just slapped me, and said, ‘don’t ever talk about that, just because you’ll go behind bars, once you talk about that.’ I asked myself, ‘why they silence me when I ask about Mandela?’

Then one other day my auntie was working here in Durban, so my uncle just came, and he was sitting inside my father’s room, they were just drinking alcohol, brandy. Then I come and I sit between my uncle’s legs, and I noticed that they were planning to talk about this Mandela. I pretended like I feel sleepy, then I slept. So they talk freely about Mandela, now, telling each other all those things, and I was listening attentively. Then after that I woke up and I told my uncle that I want to go to the toilet. I go to the toilet, then after that I jump over the fence, went to one of my friends, and I started to tell him. I said, ‘I heard my father talking about this Mandela.’ And I told him about Mandela, all those things. So I get inspired, and the way my father was talking to my uncle about Mandela, I was so inspired. Just because the way they were talking. And I used to open my eyes a little bit, and the way they were talking I noticed they didn’t want anyone to come inside. They didn’t know there was someone still listening to the things they were talking about.

In high school Mashumi served as chairperson of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), which was affiliated with the ANC. After passing standard 10 in 1986, he joined the struggle with the ANC and became the chairperson of the ANC Youth League in his town. In 1994 he canvassed for the ANC to help win the election, and put great faith in what the party would do for the country. He says, “Before 1994 I believed that once the ANC took over the rule of this country, just because in that day we believed that the son of God would come back, Jesus Christ. I used to say, ‘the ANC is going to hand over the rule of this country to Jesus Christ’.” Once Mashumi realized the ANC was not fulfilling their promises, he severed his ties with the party, though he continued to vote for them.
Now according to what they do, ignoring the people who are voting for them. I see no other political party, but I think the people they are sick and tired of going to the polling station to vote for them for nothing. Really I can’t say because I don’t think there are any other political parties who can change the ANC, just because all of them, I think they are not good. But if the ANC can stick with the principles of the ANC, help the people the way the people helped the ANC, I think it would take longer to take the ANC away from the rule of this country.

Though Mashumi no longer approves of the ANC leadership, he still supports the organization’s doctrine.

I really believe in the principles of the ANC, but I don’t believe in the rulers of the ANC, I think they are not following the principles of the ANC accordingly…. They promised many things, and our constitution, the constitution of the ANC, we used to read it and it’s very fair to all the people. … But after 1994 we noticed, the poor, that they’re not really stuck on what the constitution said. So that is why the ANC, they’re not really clear on their way, they were planning away from their constitution. Just because the only thing they do is to ignore their constitution.

While ANC the constitution provides basic safeties and liberties, people in shack settlements do not appreciate these rights.

People still stay in squatters and there are fires, floods, everything bad, crooks are there, we are really not protected. I cannot say they’ve done well just because they say, ‘ja, we’ve got the right of expressing ourselves, we can say whatever we want to say.’ But that is not the freedom we are fighting for, only to talk, just because sometimes when we talk they just send police then after that they are silencing us.”

This difference between the principles of the ANC and how the leaders are behaving is what drove Mashumi to join Abahlali and become the movement’s vice-president.
That is why here in KwaZulu-Natal I fight for Abahlali baseMjondolo. I saw that Abahlali baseMjondolo was not a movement against the ANC, the movement reminded the ANC to fill their promises. During the elections they always promised that ‘if you vote for us, what we’re going to do, we’re going to build houses for you, we are going to do this and this and this and this.’ Then after that, once we finished voting, they forget about us. That is why I decided to join Abahlali baseMjondolo.

While Mashumi participates in Abahlali’s protests and “No Land, No House, No Vote” election boycott, he still likes to attend ANC meetings when he is home with his family at the Eastern Cape. Mashumi’s mother was very supportive of his involvement with the ANC, “and still now, my mother, still likes the ANC too much. You can’t stop her. And even if I tell her about Abahlali, she says, ‘my child, don’t forget the ANC.’” However the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal it is different. He expands, “Here, you don’t feel like you are in the ANC meetings. And even if you put your own opinion, they listen to you differently, the way you talk. And after that, you notice that the way they answer your questions is a little bit unassertive. Just because our language is different, and they just listen to our language, they go, ‘oh, just because you’re Xhosa you think you’re clever.’” Nevertheless, Mashumi maintains that the ANC has established the values to help the people, it’s just a matter of following them. He says, “If they follow the principles of the ANC accordingly, the way it’s written, the way they put it, and even those who died for it. If they can follow what the ANC was, I think it will be good, and they can fix the problem in the ANC. But if they don’t want to follow the principles, they will not be able to change.”

Abahlali was formed to make the voice of its members heard, in hopes that politicians will stick to the principles their party has established and start working to help the people. While Mashumi was not at Abahlali’s founding protest, he had previously discussed the need of a movement to unite and empower the people.

The time Abahlali started I was not here, I was at home, there was a funeral. I spoke to one, I used to stay there in Forman road, and I told the men at Forman road. I said, ‘guys, let us wake up, and fight against this lack of service.’ They ask, ‘how?’ I say, ‘I don’t know, but let’s try to join together and voice out what we are dissatisfied of.’ Then after that they said, ‘No no, go back home, then once you come back then we are gonna talk about it.’ Then they told me at home, they told me that, ‘ja, we met with Kennedy road.’ So Kennedy road would form what is known as Abahlali. When I came back I notice that there is an organization known as Abahlali. And I went there to join Abahlali, and I decided to listen to the principles of Abahlali. Then after that I noted, ‘these are the only principles I need’ where the people there can abide themselves on truth, and can try to help the poor people.

Abahlali offers the shack dwellers not only a way to voice their grievances, but a fighting chance at actually being heard. Their power builds as time passes and the movement gains members and attention. They also are true to their guiding principles; Abahlali works democratically, and accommodates everyone. Mashumi testifies, “Here in Abahlali baseMjondolo, ah, I feel at home. Most of them are Zulu people. But, the way they like me, I feel at home really. They know that I’m a Xhosa and always at the meetings I speak my language.… They always want me to talk all the time, just because they appreciate the language…. We treat each other the same.”

Abahlali operates with truth, which is a start contrast to the lies of the ANC. Mashumi explains, “The thing I like about Abahlali baseMjondolo is that they speak truth. If they don’t know how to do something they say, ‘No, we don’t know how to this and this and this and this. Can you tell us what we can do?’ That is what I like. They’re transparent, and tell the truth, not to lie about it, just because I don’t like the people who are lying.” This truth is hard for the ANC leadership to handle, and why Abahlali is constantly threatened in hopes of keeping the people quiet.

They can listen anytime if they want to, but if they are still corrupt I don’t think they can listen to Abahlali, just because Abahlali, they are speaking the truth all the time. But I don’t think they can associate with the people who are only speaking truth when they don’t want to hear it. But if they want this country to be a better country, I think they can listen to Abahlali, but Abahlali is good, the truth is good.… You can’t force the ANC to listen if they are not prepared to. Or change their mind, you can’t do it. We can just force the lack of service delivery because it’s our right to voice what we are dissatisfied with.

The ability to voice complaints and be heard by the government is not much to ask, in fact it is a right that the South African constitution is supposed to promote.
It’s so unfair. To voice our views is what even the ANC constitution says, that we have to voice our views. … What they preach they are not practicing. They want other people to practice, but they themselves they don’t want to practice what they preach. To treat the social movement and all other people the way they treat is not what is written in the ANC constitution. Just because we know the constitution of the ANC, we read the constitution of the ANC, and I think the constitution of the ANC is in my head. But the people who are in power, they don’t like to follow it through and through.

Failing to ensure the rights of all citizens means that many people have yet to be fully liberated, even thirteen years after South Africa became a democracy.
When these people say they are protecting our new liberation, and when they say our new liberation what they mean, they say we are also involved in that new liberation. If we are involved in that new liberation, why when we express ourselves, why when we share our opinion we are silenced, if we are all free? They must say they are free, not all of us. Just because…whenever we are marching they are trying by all means to silence us.

Abahlali has proven that the ANC cannot silence the truth as easily as the ruling party would like, and that every attempt to quiet the shack dwellers will be met with another demand for service delivery and accountability.
Contrasting Abahlali’s truth is the corruption and greed of ANC leadership. Rather than worrying about the needs of the voters only at election time, politicians must remain accountable all the time.

If our leaders, they can stop to be greedy, just because I think they are so greedy. They want to fulfill their needs, and are not there to fulfill the needs of the people, they are there to fulfill the needs of their family, their friends, cousins, and all those people. But if they want to take care of the people and know that ‘these people, they voted for us to be here, to do whatever they want us to do for them,’ they can be good, and they achieve a lot and I think this country could be a better country.

Corruption is a problem that leaders must try to solve, but the citizens must do their part to keep the leaders inline.
[We must] try to irradiate by all means what is known as corruption, just because this country is under severe corruption, and even if the people here in SA, if you’re corrupt they mustn’t support you. They should just let the law take its course; I think it would be good. Just because some other people sometimes notice that they are favoring. If I did something wrong, they lied to me. Even if it’s wrong, even if it’s right, they just follow me, no matter where I go or as I’m going to the river, they just follow me that way. And if the people can speak the truth and concentrate on the important, I think it would good.

Careerism has also become a problem in South African politics, especially with the yearly floor crossing period.
Another thing that has made the ANC government to be so corrupt is that thing I really hate that crossing floor legislation. I think that those people they cross the floor, they’re not really members of the ANC or whatever, I think they’re just the people who want to get a job. They don’t care about the poor people, and all those things, they just care about themselves. And the ANC allows those people to come, and some of them they are not doing the job the way the ANC is doing the job, or the way the ANC wants them to do their job. They’ve got their other constitution on this hand, and another constitution on this hand.

The people voted in by the people must work to serve the people, and follow the principles the people elected them to follow.

Though Abahlali is working hard to challenge the government, and there are youth who are very instrumental in the movement, Mashumi is concerned about the younger generation. Part of this may be due to their selfishness, as he states, “most of the youngsters, for instance, they don’t care about the politics, they feel like if we challenge a politician or whatever, your mind is not straight, just because you care about other people, you don’t care about yourself…. The youngsters believe that if you have something, you must use it in your own time, not to share it with other people.” It also seems that the youth respect authority more than their rights.

They don’t want to challenge the government. They think that if you challenge the government you are a sinner or whatever, you are turning the country upside down. They don’t want to practice their rights. And that is what I believe, that you have to practice your rights, no matter what, or else they can put a finger on your eye. But if you say, ‘I don’t like this’, you have to, don’t run away, challenge them. I always say sometimes, I believe that, if you see a cow there, and somebody asks you, ‘what is that?’ don’t say, ‘something with 2 horns and 4 legs,’ just say, ‘that is a cow.’ Straight.

With any luck Abahlali will not only open the eyes of the government, but show the youth that change is possible, but it requires taking a stand for the truth.

Mashumi is dedicated to Abahlali, and believes that the movement’s future will bring great things. He declares, “I don’t even worry about other social movements, about any other thing, the only thing I want to make sure it that Abahlali proves the point, that is what I want to achieve. Just because I believe that, we fought against apartheid and we succeeded, and I was involved. And now I am involved in Abahlali, and I think we are going to win this race.” Once Abahlali makes local councilors listen to the poor and provide housing, Mashumi thinks the movement could broaden its scope and move on to include other struggles.
Even if they give us houses and all those things, I think to banish a movement like Abahlali I would consider it to be stupidity. But if we keep Abahlali going, I think Abahlali can make so many things in the country straight. If ever they build houses we must continue with another thing, we can fight whatever, whatever thing we notice that is not good, here in South Africa. … In my own opinion, I think if they can continue even beyond this development, ja, it would be no problem.

S’bu Zikode, the president of Abahlali, is a major inspiration for Mashumi. He is one of the people, a contrast to the government officials who refuse to come to the shack settlements and listen to the people.
First of all he’s not a greedy person. Secondly, whatever he’s doing, he can feel about it. And he’s always encouraging the people all the time, and the way he talks, he’s not just talking anyhow to the people, he’s always down when he talks. You can’t say, ‘this is a leader.’ You can say, ‘this is a leader,’ only when you see him talking. But when you walk with him, or do anything with him, he’s an ordinary man, like everybody. … Some other people they feel like they can go to town and stay in town, he always stays with the people. And he believes in what is known as humanity, he really believes in it.

While Mashumi’s allegiances are now firmly planted in Abahlali baseMjondolo, he has not forgotten his ANC beginnings, and what the liberation movement did for the country, though there is still much to be done.
When you think about Mandela sometimes you even forget about the politics, or what he did for the country and all those things. When I think about Mandela I think about him as a father. No matter what father did wrong, he’s always your father. I rate him as a very good man who knows what the poor people need. He sacrificed his life for the betterment of the poor, but there’s still no betterment of the poor.

They Ignore Our Struggle
Louisa Motha interview 21 November 2007

Louisa Motha was born in the Motala Heights settlement and still lives there with her family today. She first became involved in Abahlali baseMjondolo in 2004, and is now the movement’s coordinator. Louisa was not affiliated with any social movements prior to joining Abahlali, and said that this movement attracted her, “Because they’re talking this language we want, they understand our situation.… Like how the ANC doing, they just shout, they talking so much like they’re gonna build this, they’re gonna make this, and this and this and this. And at the end of the day, nothing.”

Since 1994, the ANC has been promising to help people in informal settlements by improving water and sanitation, and building houses. Yet the local government has not delivered on these promises:

They’re just thinking for themselves, they’re not worried about the people. There is so much lies. The ANC doesn’t come and contact the people who are poor. When it is time for the vote, they just come and say they’re going to do this. Counselors, they are government and they don’t want to just do something for the people, they come using lies. They’re not doing anything. They’re just telling lies for the vote, after the vote they just kick you out…. The government they say they must make the tents or the jobs. They just make them to be more than before. They don’t care about the poor, because some of the councilors they’re just taking from that tent.

This may be due to the leaders’ greed and lack of understanding for what poor people are going through. Louisa asks, “If you’re not working and you’ve got to buy everything, how are you going to buy the food if you’re not working? Like I’m not working myself, how am I supposed to go buy food?” Rather than using their resources to help the poor, “People from government they just take the money from somebody else, they never give even one cent, they just take for themselves.”

Conditions for people who live in shacks have not improved since the country became a democracy, and globalization is often blamed for keeping the poor impoverished. Louisa [speaking about the factories that displaced her from her first home] proclaims, “South Africa’s very bad. The people from outside they come in here and make the business. The people from here they’re not making the business, and people from outside they’re carrying on the business on our land. There’s nothing for us.” Yet she is convinced that the South African government cannot continue to operate this way, and that, “When government changes their plans then I think we will have more jobs.”

One of Abahlali’s main slogans is talk to us, not about us, and Louisa is a true believer in this motto. She says political officials, “need to listen to what we say, and they must come, and listen.” If given the opportunity to talk to the councilor she would tell him:
Come and see what’s happening. You can say you know I’m hungry, but you never come in my house and see if I’ve got food or not. At the end of the day you just go to the parliament and shout, ‘my people are full,’ but you never see that thing. You’re not coming to see the people and connecting with the people. The government does not mind about us, because for so many years we’re just shouting, and nothing. We haven’t got houses, we’re shouting for houses, even my mother today is passing away from the shacks. Myself too I will pass away from the shacks, even my children…. They’re just saying everything’s nice, but at the end of the day we know it’s a lie.

The more the government continues to silence the people, the longer shack dwellers will remain in unsafe and unhealthy conditions. Yet this change can only happen when the government stops silencing the people. Louisa declares, “The ANC they’re just trying to close the mouths of everybody.” She argues that, “Words from everyone have to be heard. They mustn’t listen to just the words of the rich, or the big people, they must listen to the words from everyone. They say it’s a government for everyone, but the way they do they don’t look like they’re a government for everyone.” That is what makes the space Abahlali has created so vital to giving participatory democracy a chance and improving the lives of the poor, no matter how long and hard the fight may be. Louisa says, “When we march, they just send the police to just hit us, for nothing, for no reason. The constitution it says we can march, but they’re hitting the people, oppressing the people, it’s not a good thing.”

Abahlali’s strength comes from their apolitical position and conviction to speak out against the ANC without becoming a political party. Louisa explains, “We’re not involved with the politics, we’re just asking our demand from the government, that’s it.” By maintaining their autonomy from political baggage, Abahlali’s voice can be heard. She continues, “We’re trying to make something because we’re talking. They must listen to us, we mustn’t listen to them. They ignore our struggle. We came from the shacks, we know this life, we carry on with this life, but something for us needs to change. They mustn’t expect to just get the vote and go away.” Abahlali’s No Land, No House, No Vote election boycott has helped to prove this point. Louisa, like the majority of people involved in Abahlali, voted ANC before participating in this boycott. She clarifies, “We are ANC supporters. But they must change the conditions; they don’t know what we want…. These workers for government, they do everything nice but they’re not doing nice things.”

It Doesn’t Feel Liberating; You Don’t Get the Sense of Freedom
David Ntseng interview 28 November 2007

David Ntseng grew up in an informal settlement in Inanda, near Durban. He first became drawn in to activism when he was in school. David recounts, “In 1986, I was schooling in kwaMashu, that was the time when students across KZN, and across the country actually, we were boycotting paying for education and demanding textbooks for free, and that whole activism at schools around free education and free textbooks and stuff like that. So my first orientation was at the school level of politics.” His participation grew from there, to include local issues. He continues, “And then from then on it just spilled over to area politics where there was a lot around party political factions between ANC, IFP, at the time it wasn’t even ANC it was UDF, and later on became the Mass Democratic Movement, and things like that.” After finishing matric in 1991, David decided to study activism and went to a school in Cape Town.

There was one post matric school that was teaching activists on various modules. We were looking at West Africa as a potential area for maintaining some activism in the sense that in the 60s, that whole movement in the 60s, countries gaining independence, the imminent of struggle in South Africa in the beginning of the 90s. So West Africa was an interesting place, at least at that school, because it was training activists to look at what is politics beyond party politics, what is politics in as far as people’s own political identity. It used to be called the Workers’ Fund. It was almost like and NGO but an institution where activists were recruited from various areas, some would be recruited from the Eastern Cape, some from Western Cape, we were all there. We had to learn some French because that’s the medium in West Africa, and then we could eventually interact with activists from there.

The school related the struggles in other countries to the changes in South Africa.

We looked at how South Africa was doing in relation to, at that time I would say the Rwanda genocide was still continuing at a high speed, so it was at that time when there were some unrests in some parts of Africa. So all that is looked at in relation to what is happening in South Africa, the unbanning of the ANC, releasing of Mandela, people coming back from exile, and of course the unfortunate death of Chris Hani, the dismantling of what was known as Bantustans, or homelands government, in other words that whole push between 1992 and 93, especially 93 where a number of protests marches were launched on the Bantustans territories.

After the Workers’ Fund, David attended the University of KwaZulu Natal from 1994 until 1997. He completed his bachelors and honors in Theology, and also did some Environment and Development Studies. During his time at school and since, David has been inspired by a variety of authors and movements around the world. Some authors that stand out are Frantz Fanon, Michael Neocosmos, and Alain Badiou. The Landless Workers Movement in Brazil called MST or Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra and the Land Research Action Network or LRAN have also been motivated his work. David confirms, “All that material has somewhat shaped how I think, how I feel.”

In 1999 David got an internship at the Church Land Programme (CLP), the NGO where he now works. In 2001 they employed him full time.

I got in as a researcher. It was after the elections, and already they new ANC led government was looking at this whole issue of land reform, because that’s the thrust of South African politics, or African politics as it were, what to do with land that people were dispossessed of, in the 1800s and prior, let’s say the whole era of colonialism, imperialism, the system. So the South African government that took over in 1994, the priority as far as one hoped, was that you redressed land. Of course they introduced land reform policies. The organization that I work for, at that time observing what is happening, farmers expected to make available their land or government expropriating some land, it was concerned to the fact that all this is happening and nothing is said or done about land that is owned by churches. We are talking about Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, all these missionary originated churches. They in their introduction took quite large amounts of hectares so that they can establish missions, schools, you name it. Now the new dispensation, if 1994 is anything to refer to, already people are settled down on these farms and they are settled there in large quantities, in terms of family numbers, and they equally don’t have security on those farms. They are as vulnerable as anyone else in the country. Now the organization said someone must look into this issue of land that is owned by churches. I was then employed to do an internship to look at how many each denomination owns. I looked at the Methodist, I looked at the Catholics, also Lutherans, and of course with history in South Africa, quite a number of properties have been expropriated from these churches, especially in those homeland systems parts of the country, the Transkei and others. I remember in Transkei almost about 80% of land was declared state land because the Transkei government of the time wouldn’t allow private ownership, except on those coastal belts near the sea… So I came in doing from 1999, in 2002 I started working with one community which is near Verulum, that’s like 20 kilometers north of Durban. This community was part of land reform and they were dynamics there around the issue of rights, the issue of sovereignty, in as far as who decides what has to happen in the communities. Is it elders from the community, is it government, is it private companies, in this case sugar cane growers, the small and medium enterprises around that.

While he has worked for the CLP, David has been loosely involved with the Landless People’s Movement by working collaboratively on request. However he was never a member of the movement.

There were times where we had discussions, sit in meetings, with this other movement called Landless People’s Movement, but that movement works largely with one other organization that we dialogue with called AFRA – Association for the Rural Advancement. Going there would be on request, ‘can you come and be part of this strategizing meeting,’ I’ve been part of those. We’ve had a collaborating research with them looking at the restitution program: how effective is it, will it yield the results as expected, what does it do to landlessness? That kind of research we did collaboratively with LPM. That was the level at which I got involved with them at the time. But in the way that one is involved with Abahlali, no I have not been with any other movement.

David became involved with Abahlali baseMjondolo in early 2006 through Dr. Raj Patel, an active member and supporter of Abahlali.

He would interact with our organization and one time he said, ‘look, if you are in Durban just take your time and come to some of our meetings in Durban.’ At that time I remember there was going to be the march on the 27th of February, and Abahlali was mobilizing for resources, so they sent a request across for organizations to support in order to pay for busses and what what what. So we got that request at our center, and we heard Raj talking about these guys. So then I got involved by knowing someone who was actively involved, he seduced me into it, but into the right place.… I then became more interested, I think it was around the time when Abahlali were planning a big event for the 27th of April, which was called ‘Unfreedom Day’ to coincide with ‘Freedom Day,’ as the country would have it, even in our calendar. So I attended some of the meetings that were taking place at University and some were here.

His appreciation for the Abahlali is related to his upbringing, education, and job at the CLP.

I’ve always respected what people like Abahlali are doing. I myself come from an informal settlement, my home is still there. I live in kwaMashu which is a township, I work for the organization that prioritizes working with ordinary people in a way that allows them to set the agenda of what it means for them to be free, or what it means for them to work towards freedom. So all those things to me lay the grounds for falling in love with this kind of worth. I always say it’s a blessing that one had an opportunity to work with Abahlali baseMjondolo.

David also respects the way supporters of Abahlali who do not live in informal settlements interact with the movement, as it sets an example for how poor people should be supported.

Of course there are people like Raj Patel, people like Richard Pithouse, who have this resilience to make sure that they work to support movements of ordinary people, and observing the kind of stuff that they do, you feel motivated, and say this is possible. You can work on the basis of what actually movements of the poor want, and leadership that is coming from communities that are impoverished, rather than bring in your own assumptions as someone who is surrounded by resources and set the agenda for them.

Relationships where the poor are in control and can make their own plans are the ideal.

This model of poor people deciding what they want, and then being assisted by community members with resources is what David hopes people at NGOs will learn to do.

If people like myself who work in NGOs and such still want to see their work as being progressive in the sense that it tries to allow alternatives from this dominant neo-liberal agenda or way of running the country, for it to do that successfully it has to listen to the poor it serves. Instead of directing, leading, strategizing for them, allow them to say how they see their reality, and what they think it will take for their reality to be transformed. In that approach, try to see in what way can they offer support, because NGOs have resources and they are connected even overseas, how do the resources that they have give effect to the strategies that the poor themselves have set. To me, that will be a way to go in terms of supporting strategies and struggles of basic communities.

Yet to go about business this way, an NGO cannot follow top-down plans, and thus risks severing any existing relationships they have with the government. David explains, “It depends how that NGO conducts itself, or how that NGO regards itself. If it feels it’s a quasigovernment NGO, surely it will be treated with high respects and all, or it will be regarded highly as a partner with government, by virtue of it being quasigovernment.” The same is true of social movements. They are forced to choose between following state policies and forfeiting a critical perspective, or speaking out for the people they represent but being quieted by the government.

Likewise social movements that will look into forming partnerships with the state, affirming what the state is doing, looking up to what the state is promising even if it doesn’t offer. That social movement of course will be legitimate the eyes of the state. Now to me that says any organization or social movement that does the opposite, that breaks away from the state politics or state projects, then it’s launching an offensive to the state, and they will be treated by all means as an enemy, and be crushed.

For someone employed by an NGO, involved in a social movement, and educated in activism, this situation in unacceptable. David declares, “It’s so not on, so not on. It’s unethical; it’s not supposed to be that way. It’s immature, both at the level of politics and at the level of governing the country. So it’s not allowed to be like that.”

Much of the ANC’s refusal to listen to protest comes from the history of the liberation movement.

I doubt that there will be a time when the ANC will actually try to listen, because if you listen carefully to the national leaders of the ANC are saying, they talk about the ANC tradition, often time when something comes up as a crisis in the ANC they say, ‘the ANC tradition says…’ That ANC tradition goes back to Lusaka as the headquarters of the ANC of the country, or headquarters of the ANC in exile so that they can always give direction to what happens in the country and everywhere else in the universe as long as people are part of the ANC. So what is that tradition? That tradition is the tradition of obedience, of capturing, grasping, and internalizing the word, the direction, as coming from the headquarters, or as coming from the national executive council, if not the national working community. So anything that looks disobedient or deviant to that word is anti-ANC and it’s anti-traditional. It will be difficult to imagine the ANC that believes in the voices from the margins, the voices from the grassroots, it will be difficult to imagine the ANC that does that. Of course at branch levels there are discussions, but those discussions are so much about what is the word from the national headquarters, and how is that word communicated to the branch level, and how then do the branches dialogue with it in a way that they show they have internalized it, they understand what the word is.

David backs this analysis up with practical examples:

People of Khutsong have declared on a number of occasions that they don’t want to be removed from Gauteng, they want to remain in Gauteng and they don’t want to go to Northwest. No matter what the reasons are, the least you can do is to listen. But it’s not what has happened. Another example, Abahlali baseMjondolo. Their politics is simple, it’s politics of life: all we want is homes, decent homes, where we’re living because it’s next to where we work. All we want is jobs, all we want is safe water, proper sanitation, we want to be treated as decent human beings like everyone else. Now that’s difficult to stand as the ANC because it doesn’t code the word from the national headquarters. Actually, it works against the word from the national headquarters because at the moment the word from the national headquarters is the BEE, the ensuring of economic growth being GEAR. Now if you have people who are forcing you to account and actually put them in a picture that says as the country this is how you transform ordinary people’s lives, it doesn’t offer that opportunity. And so, the ANC tradition then suggests you silence those voices because they are disobedient to the word. So it’s hard to imagine a transformed ANC.

Though the possibility of the ANC beginning listen to the people is unlikely, people have begun to speak up.
This to me is just the beginning, there’s more to come. If more and more people believe in their own power, believe in the power of their own intellectual resources, their own strategies, their thinking capacities, their dreams, because that’s what’s how you drive them to a better future, to believe in the actualization of their dreams, their dreams to be human beings, that’s what they want, it’s nothing more than that. If movements like this one make that more and more visible to anyone and everyone, surely people will want to do the same. At the moment to me Abahlali are like a cloud of witness that need to convince everyone that as an ordinary person you can still make your voice heard, or you can force your voice to be heard. That will begin to allow other people to gain conviction and do likewise.

One group that particularly needs to learn the power of their voice is the youth of South Africa, who have grown complacent since they have not lived through apartheid.
Getting youth will take quite a lot of conscientization, quite a lot, especially because schools through the subjects like history and other social oriented studies does open the opportunity to read about South Africa before 94, but it’s not enough because not every youth is at school, so in areas where people live it will take a lot of conscientization, drawing the picture, for people to understand.

Yet it is not necessary to have lived through apartheid to be dissatisfied with the current problems in South Africa.
Say you don’t know about apartheid, fine, but you still have to make sense of why is it, in this day in age, there are so few extremely rich people, and so many really really poor people? You don’t have to know apartheid in order to look into this as one of the tormenting issues or conditions in the country. You have to say, why does this happen under the banner of liberations? Because it doesn’t feel liberating; you don’t get the sense of freedom. Now if you were to be asked those questions: why aren’t you working, why aren’t you at varsity, do you think it’s fair that education is this expensive? All those things will probe them to think, and think about the fact that they are unable to prosper or be citizens that they want to be. You look at the youth that is part of Abahlali and most of them are people of your age, and surely at the time there was the first national elections in 94, some were far from getting IDs, but they can tell that someone is consciously deciding to make life hard for some people.”

When the youth open their eyes to the inequalities surrounding them, regardless of the nation’s history, they will find that they need to stand up for themselves and make their voices heard

It is important that the ANC begins to listen to movements like Abahlali and NGOs like the Church Land Programme. Though the ANC came to power with good intentions, things have gone horribly wrong.

Obviously the ANC has had the legitimation by virtue of its history as a liberation movement, way back from how it began, the fact that most of its members went through exile, were forced to exile, imprisoned, some longer like former President Nelson Mandela. All of that legitimated its identity in relation to Black people in South Africa and all people concerned with the liberation, irrespective of their race. Come 94, everyone was sick of national apartheid government. Now the alternative is this people’s movement, national liberation movement as everyone understood it at the time, and what it represented. What happens in government, especially say in 1996, the open declaration of economic policy in the form of GEAR was for many concerned people alarm bells ringing, to say something big is coming, or something has happened and it caught us off guard. No one expected the turning point of 1996. Of course some want to do connections with even the vision of the RDP document as one that had been used to ensure that all disadvantaged South African enjoyed freedoms, some want to make connections that even there were elements of neo-liberal policies, it’s just that the language was so disguised that you wouldn’t pick it up the first time, but come 1996 with GEAR, it was so obvious that the main thrust here is to that the government has an open way for the neo-liberal agenda. That started making things for almost everyone. The lack of service delivery, they were the beginning of talks around privatization of water, and actually the trials of implementing some of those projects, retrenchment in numbers of people who had been working, some for state or parastatal companies, privatization of almost every asset that the state owned. That was the beginning of the end of hopes for freedom and liberation, and that was the end of looking at the ANC as this liberation movement as it were. These guys, seemingly they are not that different from what we’ve been through, it’s just that this time it’s done by people of the same color. There’s a lot of disillusionment I’d say, there’s a lot of disillusionment. It has never changed, instead it’s aggravated, it’s picked up speed, I mean in every sector that you can imagine where one would have expected government to have taken advantage to launch real programs of reform: land reform is going nowhere, restitution in particular is going nowhere. I think the dates for actual completion of restitution programs have been shifted 3 times now. The first was by 1999, 30% of land in South Africa would have been transferred from Whites to Blacks, it was pushed to 2004, and it was pushed to 2008. And until now only 4%, and it’s been over ten years, it’s been 4%. Now this thing of halting poverty by 2014 then becomes a dream, a far fetched dream just to lure people into hoping, hoping, hoping but nothing actually takes place on the ground.

There are a variety of factors that have resulted in these problems in South Africa, many dealing with the nation’s economic relations with the West.

It’s a long story and there are so many connections to it. The fact that South Africa has brought itself to countries of Europe in a silver platter, or maybe shall I say platinum platter, is one of the reasons. You can’t open yourself up to be dictated to by the western countries, they are way ahead of you in this economic trade and what have you. They are way ahead because they started a long time ago, with manipulating resources and raw material from Africa. Now the interest of seeing this democratically elected or popular elected leadership of this country, to them it’s still a win, because then they will introduce you to some of the wonders, as understood in Western economics, of being part of the players in world economics. But rules of the game are so difficult for your own people, but nevertheless, because it will open doors for some of the people, those that are rich will take the offer. You cannot explain why you have sharks like Tokyo Sexwale who’s in the construction company in a big way, he’s a money maker that guy, and the likes of Mathebe, and at the same time have ordinary people like the ones who live in shacks here. Yet they are all represented by one government, the liberation government. Surely, when it gets to the level of the European economy, there are some that are not represented, and those that are not represented unfortunately become your shack dwellers, your people living on farms. The Mathebes, the Tokyo Sexwales are represented because it’s easy to side with other heavyweights in the Western economy. To me it’s all linked to economic play. To grow the economy, how that is grown, is just play the game.

Until the ANC becomes aware of the needs of the people and steps out of their game with the Western economy, the wealth disparities of the country will continue to grow.

Though South Africa is plagued with a variety of problems, and the ANC has not lived up to the expectations of the people, it is unlikely that they will put there support behind another political party.

When you try to listen to these informal discussions… you still get the sense that in as much as people are so disillusioned by the ANC in government, they ask you, ‘where do we go?’ And no one is ready to go anywhere but the ANC, unless people consciously decide not to vote at all. People would rather hold their vote than take that anywhere else. That’s the current trend at the moment that I’ve witnessed and I’ve heard people sharing. With the last elections, it was clear that the number of voters had gone down tremendously. But still whatever the number or percentage of reduction is, the ANC still sits on top, in relation to other political parties. So that will continue to happen unless other promising political parties emerge in the near future, and how that will happen I don’t know. I don’t know because what I can see is that people have realized that party politics really doesn’t go anywhere, it doesn’t yield any results to expect political parties to make changes. That’s part of the disillusionment that we’ve gone through with the ANC, which was most trusted. Less and less people believe that political parties will yield something.

So what does this mean for the future of South Africa and civil society?

I know that part of it means people will slowly believe that power lies with people who are suffering. Now how to express that power, I think it’s up for scrutiny, part of which will be to abort any attempt to become a political party themselves, because otherwise the oppressed become the oppressors, and then find ways of expressing their political power, not through party politics but through their own sovereignty as peoples of the country, as ordinary citizens, to say they will take power, they will run power, but they not take the state. Probably that will be one of the positions, not necessarily the position that people may end up taking. This I am saying in relation to observing how Abahlali are conducting their politics, they are prepared to hold the state to account, but they are not themselves part of the state, in the sense that they have state political power. But they are saying whoever is in the position of being the state is subject to accountability and transparency. So maybe that’s the kind of future that one will witness should movements like Abahlali continue to grow and connect with other forces everywhere else in the country. I have so much belief in that. From what I’ve observed in the past two years now, I think they have the potential to grow. They are beginning to make networks in with groups in Cape Town, continuing to make groups with networks in the Free State, so their struggle is strong, and it’s not even their struggle as Abahlali’s struggle, it’s their struggle as any ordinary citizen that is undermined, marginalized, oppressed, not listened to.