Statement of solidarity from NUMSA after the assassination of Lindokuhle Mnguni

NUMSA STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO FOLLOWING THE ASSASINATION OF YET ANOTHER LEADER

23 August 2022
Press statement

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) stands in solidarity with Abahlali baseMjondolo following the assassination of yet another one of its leaders. Lindokuhle Mnguni the chairperson of the eKhenana Commune and the Youth League was assassinated on Saturday morning. The largest shack dwellers movement in the country has been experiencing persistent attacks over the years where several of its leaders have been killed and in total, ABM has lost 24 leaders to assassinations either by the police or izinkabi (hitmen). The movement is still mourning the loss of Nokuthula Mabaso who was killed in May and Ayanda Ngila who was murdered in March. NUMSA condemns the cowardly killers who committed this heinous act!
Mnguni was a brilliant thinker and intellectual. He has been described as a ‘radical’ who was a proud Communist and internationalist. ABM has described him in the following way: Continue reading

Statement of solidarity from the MST after the assassination of Lindokuhle Mnguni

Note of solidarity with the eKhenana Commune, the Abahlali baseMjondolo and the memory of comrade Lindokuhle Mnguni

“Violence destroys what it claims to defend: the dignity of life, the freedom of the human being”.

The Movement of landless rural workers and its Samora Machel Brigade on the African continent stands in solidarity with all the comrades of the Abahlali baseMjondolo (ABM), together with the families of the eKhenana Commune who last weekend violently lost comrade Lindokuhle Mnguni.

Mnguni is now a seed! He will be forever planted in the hearts of the people with whom he shared the trenches of the struggle and will remain forever planted in the imagination of all the fighters of the people, from now until the day of human emancipation, which will surely come, as the fruit of the ground we plant, of the seeds we sow for a better and more just world, must come. Continue reading

Attachments


Solidarity statement from the MST

Statement of solidarity from the Socialist Movement of Ghana

SOCIALIST MOVEMENT OF GHANA (SMG)

STATEMENT OF CONDEMNATION
23rd August, 2022.

The Socialist Movement of Ghana strongly condemns the assassination of Comrade Lindokuhle Mnguni, the Chairperson of the eKhenana Commune and Youth League of the Shack Dwellers Movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (ABM). We send our deepest sympathies to his family, close friends, and all of our ABM comrades.

Our Comrade, Lindokuhle Mnguni was an exceptional intellectual with a real vision and commitment to the struggles of the oppressed. A young man with a bright future in leadership, he was always modest and gave the people his time. Continue reading

Attachments


STATEMENT OF CONDEMNATION-2

Picket outside court tomorrow, memorial and funeral dates for Mnguni announced

23 August 2022
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Picket outside court tomorrow, memorial and funeral dates for Mnguni announced

Tomorrow the killers of Nokuthula Mabaso will be appearing in court for a bail hearing. Pastor Samson Ngubane and his brother who are in custody for the murder of Mabaso, will appear in court. Mabaso was leader of the Women’s League in eKhenana, and also played a very instrumental role in the eKhenana Commune.

There will be a picket outside the Durban Magistrates Court to demand that justice is undertaken in a serious and genuinely impartial manner. Continue reading

Presentation to Numsa shop stewards by Mqapheli Bonono

Mqapheli Bonono gave this presentation to a meeting of shop stewards in the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa in Kimberly today.

Presentation to NUMSA Shop stewards
20 August 2022

Greetings to all Comrades of the WORKING CLASS.

It is an honour and privilege for me to be sharing this platform with the people who share the same struggle as ourselves.

Brief back ground

Abahlali baseMjondolo is a mass democratic, grassroots social movement of the shack dwellers and the poor in South Africa. It is the biggest social movement of the shack dwellers to have emerged in the post-apartheid South Africa with over 105 000 members in five provinces.
The movement was formed in 2005 to fight, promote and advance the interests and dignity of the shack dwellers and the poor in South Africa. The movement campaigns for decent land and housing in our cities, but most importantly Abahlali struggles for human dignity for shack dwellers and the poor. The movement was formed as a result of being sick and tired of the lies of the politicians. A piece of land that was promised to build houses for the poor in Kennedy Road was sold to a businessman. We then blocked the busiest M19 Road access to the city of Durban. This was out of anger and frustration. We had enough of the lies. We continue live in abject poverty.

Organising in the Shadow of death

Our movement continues to face repression from the ANC. We have lost 23 leaders and activists in the fight for land, decent and dignity. We have realised that our dignity as the poor does not count in the eyes of the ANC led government. We have been accused of organising outside of the ruling party. We continue to organise the unorganised. We are killed because of our organising. The ANC is threatened by our art of organising.

We have face brutal evictions at gun point from the state police and armed forces from the eThekwini municipality. Since our movement was formed the ANC led government wanted to destroy it. We were criticised for organising the poor. We were criticised for creating our own authority. It is not easy to organise the unorganised. It is not easy to the poor and marginalised.
In 2014, a 17 year old Nqobile Nzuza from Cato – Crest was murdered in a protest by the South African police services. Her family and others were facing an eviction from the Anti Land Invasion Unit in the eThekwini Municipality. Her crime is being poor and living in shack.
Samuel Hloele was 29 when he was killed by the Anti Land Invasion Unit in Durban. We was protecting his home from being destroyed by this armed force from the municipality. He was shot from the back and killed in eKukhanyeni Informal Settlements.

Baby Jaden Khoza was only two weeks when he was killed by police teargas in the Foreman Road Informal Settlements. The police attacks residents who were protesting for electricity. When the residents ran to their homes they followed us and teargas the entire community.
Siyabonga Manqela was killed by police in Enkanini Informal Settlements. This is after police raided people’s homes and kicked doors. Just like apartheid policing.

All these comrades died in the hands of the brutal system that uses arms against the poor.
Many leaders were attack and killed by hitmen hired (Izinkabi) hired by the ANC politicians. Thuli Ndlovu, Nkululeko Gwala, Thembinkosi Qumbela, Sifiso Ngcobo, Nokuthula Mabaso, Ayanda Ngila are some of our comrades who were killed by hitman hired by the ANC. They were uncovering the corruption in the ANC.

The Importance of Solidarity between Workers and Community Struggles

Comrades we must realise that we are facing a system of Capitalism. A system that is brutal and merciless. Capitalists do not care about us. Their interest is to make profit at all costs. They continue to exploit us. We must unite, and fight against this system.

A worker is a community member before he\she goes to work. The issues of landlessness are our issues as the poor. When workers are being exploited and paid salaries that are below the bread line, it is our responsibility to support the call for a living wage for all. It is our responsibility to call for a Basic Income Grant for all the Unemployed.

When were facing attacks form the state those who were working did not see our struggle as their struggle. It is important that we define the Working Class in the Marx way. ‘It is those who sell their labour, those who do not own means of production’.

We are Working Class, We do not own means of Production. We continue to be exploited by Recruiting Agents. We are poor and marginalised. We live in shacks indignity like pigs in the mud.

Comrade this calls us to be United and realise that our struggles are the same. We are Working Class. Your Pain in the Copper belt, Engineering and in every steel industry where workers are exploited is our pain as Abahlali baseMjondolo. We have no one but ourselves.

In order for us to fight against the oppression and exploitation we must unite the struggles of the workers and those in our community. The continuous increase in food prices affect us as communities as if affects you as workers.

Today we want to assure NUMSA our solidarity. NUMSA has been there when we are killed by the ANC. That for us is Solidarity in practice.

Amandla!!

Lindokuhle Mnguni has been assassinated

20 August 2022
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Lindokuhle Mnguni has been assassinated

In the early hours of this morning Lindokuhle Mnguni, the chairperson of the eKhenana Commune and the Youth League, was assassinated at the Commune.

Mnguni was a powerful intellectual with a mind like a razor. He was a young man with real vision and commitment, a brave man whose will to struggle was not broken by six months in prison, long periods in hiding and having to bury two close comrades this year. He was already interested in radical ideas while in high school and he read Biko, Fanon, Malcom X and Marx. Mnguni ran a reading group in prison with books such as The Wretched of the Earth and Pedagogy of the Oppressed and various pamphlets that we were able to smuggle into the prison at his request. He was a communist and an internationalist. Meetings at the Commune always started with the Internationale. The Communist Manifesto was studied line by line in the Frantz Fanon school along with writers like Fanon and Freire. Even while living under constant threat Lindokuhle was in solidarity with the struggle against the monarchy in Swaziland. In fact he led a delegation to Swaziland when PUDEMO lost a comrade. Continue reading

Ten years since the Marikana massacre

Tuesday, 16 August 2022
Abahlali baseMjondolo

This government does not care about the working class

Today is the tenth anniversary of the massacre of the workers who were slain at Marikana by the ANC government. The ANC murdered them to protect the profits of capital, and the alliance between old white capital and new black elites.

Their crime was to ask for a living wage. As poor black people their lives and their humanity did not count to the bosses, the ANC or the state and they were slaughtered like animals. Continue reading

The alleged killers of Nokuthula Mabaso are due to appear in court this morning

Friday, 12 August 2022
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

The alleged killers of Comrade Nokuthula Mabaso are due to appear this morning in the Durban Magistrate’s Court

Samson Mhlanganyelwa Ngubane, a local ANC chief who is also a pastor in the Mayville area, his brother, and his son Khaya Ngubane have all been arrested and charged with murder.

Khaya Ngubane was charged with murder of Comrade Ayanda Ngila and he remains in custody. Ayanda Ngila was shot and killed in broad-day light while working in the community garden at the eKhenana Commune on 8 March 2022.  Continue reading

We Gather in a Time of Deep Crisis on Women’s Day

8 August 2022
Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League press statement

We Gather in a Time of Deep Crisis on Women’s Day

On Women’s Day we are reminded of the 20 000 women who marched on the Union Buildings in 1956. They showed us that Unity is the Power.

We celebrate these women and all the women whose names are not remembered in the official celebrations who struggled in community organisations and trade unions and held families together under a brutal system of oppression. Continue reading

Masked Police Officers attack Salt Rock Community

Friday, 05 August 2022
Salt Rock facing continuous attacks from the KwaDukuza Municipality

Masked Police Officers attack Salt Rock Community

Our branch in Salt Rock has been facing continued attacks from the Kwadukuza Municipality. This comes after the municipality filed an application to evict which was successfully challenged by our movement.

On Tuesday, the community was attacked by police who raided their homes and beat up everyone who was in the community. As in the police attack on eNkanini in March in which Siyabonga Manqele was murdered, the police wore masks so that their faces could not be seen. Continue reading