Pure Democracy, Profesionalism, Transparency and Freedom with Fairness: The Abahlali AGM

Abahlali held their 2006 AGM on 26-11-2006 at the Kennedy Road Hall. From the beginnings of the preparation the AGM was announced through all Abahlali meetings and on community radio.

ABM did not appoint a single person to be a candidate. All Abahlali settlements and branches were given the mandate to hold open assemblies in their areas so that each settlement and branch could elect its own candidates. Each settlement and branch also had to elect and mandate its own delegates to the AGM because there was only space for 300 delegates. No area, even if is a very big area like Kennedy Road, could have more than 20 delegates. This was to make sure that the voice of the smaller areas came through carefully and that the bigger areas, and the areas closer to the hall, didn’t dominate everything. Most of the delegates were women. Abahlali is always putting izimbokodo at the front. To be a delegate you had to be a paid up Abahlali member. Membership costs R7 per anum. Even the very poor can afford this but because we are many all the R7 put together is enough for Abahlali to keep its freedom from those donors and NGOs who think that they can buy themselves a movement to say and do what they want it to do. We always say no to breyani money. Abahlali only belongs to its members.

The candidates nominated by all the different areas were contesting for seven position. These position were:

• President
• Vice-President
• Secretary
• Vice-Secretary
• Treasurer
• Public Relations Officer
• Co-ordinator

It was not compulsory for an area to contest all 7 positions. For example the Foreman Road Development Committee contested six of the positions and won one of them when Philani (Star) Ntanzi was elected as the new Vice-Secretary.

The Church Land Programme is an NGO that works with Abahlali to make the strong poor even stronger. We respect the Church Land Programme like we respect CORE, ODAC and the FXI. The Church Land Programme agreed to be our IEC and they did a very good job.

Abahlali had a very successful ‘No Land, No House, No Vote’ campaign in the March local government elections. That campaign shook the country. But at the AGM we voted in a real democracy. That was the end of our not vote campaign. There were seven ballot papers and seven ballot boxes. Each delegate had been elected and their vote was their secret. They were voting for real leaders, leader who work for the people, leaders who work to make the strong poor even stronger. They were not voting for briyani councillors who work for the rich and throw some crumbs to the poor. Briyani councillors are useless for the poor.

When the results of our election come out everyone was very happy. No single individual or area dominated the voting. This was real democracy. Now we say ‘Vote for Land and Housing!’.

Mnikelo Ndanankulu was the PRO in the 2006 Abahlali Secretariat. He lives in the Foreman Road settlement. He is unemployed but helps out at his brother’s shop in the Foreman Road settlement. He came to Foreman Road from Flagstaff in the Transkei.