Click here to read this research report in German.

http://sds.ukzn.ac.za/default.php?3,6,684,4,0

The Work of Violence:a timeline of armed attacks at Kennedy Road
School of Development Studies Research Report, 83, July 2010.

by Kerry Chance

On 26 September 2009, violent attacks by an armed group left two men dead and an estimated thousand displaced at the Kennedy Road shack settlement in the South African city of Durban. This timeline, centered on the night the attacks began to unfold, and upon the Community Hall, proposes three meaningful dimensions: (1) the mobilization of political party affiliation and the specter of an ethnic-other tied to material relations, especially employment and state resources; (2) new modes of policing in an ensuing social drama over a state-backed crackdown on criminal gangs and shebeens; (3) contested claims to political sovereignty articulated through election-time “development” projects. In proposing these three dimensions, this timeline, amid happenings of that day, sketches in broad strokes, shifts in relevant interactions between Abahlali baseMjondolo, a poor peoples’ social movement, and officials, between 2008 and 2009, at the local, municipal, and provincial level. These dimensions, entailing both articulations during the attacks by armed men, as well as post-facto in public statements by officials, coalesced to displace members of Abahlali from their homes and national headquarters in the Kennedy Road settlement.

12 July 2010
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement (Prepared at the All Night Vigil for the Kennedy 12)

The Kennedy 12 Go To Trial Today

Abahlali baseMjondolo will be at court in our numbers to support to the Kennedy 12 when their trial begins today, at 9 o’clock on Monday 12 July, in the Durban High Court.

On the 26th of September 2009 a group of forty armed men massed in the Kennedy Road shack settlement, chanted ANC and ethnic slogans and launched an attack on the elected leaders of the Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC), Abahlali baseMjondolo, their families, their comrades and all those who have associated themselves with our movement. They also declared their intention to drive Mphondo people from the settlement. They made it quite clear that their intention was to kill a number of named people including S’bu Zikode.

https://avtonom.org/en/node/12664

This afternoon, about 13 hours, the South African Embassy in Moscow, a small group of anarchists held an unauthorized picket in support of social activists and residents of informal settlements in South Africa. Participants unfurled a banner "No to repression against activists in South Africa," had scattered leaflets in the open windows of the embassy and lit the fireworks. On the banner was the emblem of the movement represented "Abahlali baseMjondolo" ("Movement Shack Dwellers") - a powerful grassroots protest movement of the poor in South Africa, which is subjected to repression.

http://suedafrika.habitants.de/?p=15

Abahlali baseMjondolo – how a poor people’s struggle for land and housing became a struggle for democracy

by Gerhard Kienast

Over the last couple of years, Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), an organisation of shack-dwellers from Durban, claimed some remarkable victories for participatory democracy. In 2006, using the Promotion for the Access to Information Act, AbM compelled their municipality to disclose plans for the city’s informal settlements and its housing budget. In February 2009, after tough negotiations with eThekwini, they reached agreement that the ‘clearance’ of the ‘slums’ they live in, would follow principles of in situ upgrading rather than relocation outside city limits. In October 2009, the Constitutional Court upheld AbM’s application that the Kwazulu-Natal Slums Act invited arbitrary evictions and thus declared it unconstitutional.

Report on the Return to Kennedy Road Campaign

The historic meeting at the Kennedy Road settlement on Sunday went well despite the intimidation from the local ANC.

The background to this meeting, and its importance, is that in September last year Abahlali baseMjondolo(AbM) and the Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC), the openly and freely elected committee in the settlement, were expelled in violent attacks organised through the local ANC and supported by the police and the criminal justice system. For months after the attacks AbM was banned from the settlement. There were regular death threats and known AbM supporters had their homes demolished or burnt. But AbM began to organise underground in the settlement and then openly - always in the face of severe intimidation and personal risk. In some cases people were subject to violence. But when the courage to resist oppression is taken forward by more people and with more commitment then the attempt to maintain oppression the will of the people can slowly prevail.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/11/upside_down_world_cup_raj_patel

"Upside Down World Cup": Raj Patel on How South Africa Has Cracked Down on the Poor and the Shack Dwellers’ Movement Ahead of the World Cup

Abahlali baseMjondolo & the Kennedy Development Committee
Press Statement, Thursday 10 June 2010

The Return to Kennedy Road Campaign

The truth remains. The truth frees. The truth cannot be hidden with lies for ever.

For lies to continue to hide the truth they must be constantly sustained and maintained. For truth to be able to emerge from under the lies we have to constantly remember what has really been said and done, by whom and for what purpose.

We have often said that the attack on our movement in the Kennedy Road settlement on the 26th and 27th of September last year was planned at a very high political level. It was planned outside of the Kennedy Road settlement.

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/a.bishops.pursuit.of.justice.for.south.africas.shack.dwellers/26028.htm

A bishop's pursuit of justice for South Africa's shack dwellers

The Bishop of Natal in South Africa, Rubin Phillip, speaks here about the struggle for justice for the nation's shack dwellers and his commitment to seeing those in suffering take charge of their own destiny.

by Emma Pomfret, Christian Aid Thursday, June 3, 2010

The first black South African to hold the position of Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Natal, and chairman of the KwaZulu-Natal Christian Council (KZNCC), Rubin Phillip is currently in the UK to raise awareness about the plight of the Durban-based shack-dweller movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo.

http://zapagringo.blogspot.com/2010/06/in-shadow-of-2010-world-cup.html

A Quiet Coup
South Africa’s largest social movement under attack

by Toussaint Losier

Originally published in Spanish at Desinformémonos
An earlier version of this article appeared in Left Turn Magazine

At roughly 11:30pm on September 26th, a group of 30 to 40 men – survivors are still unsure about the actual numbers –surrounded the community hall in Kennedy Road shack settlement in Durban, South Africa. Brandishing sticks, machetes, and automatic weapons and echoing the language of the state-sponsored internecine political conflict that tore through South Africa during the last years of apartheid, the mob launched an attack on a meeting of the Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) Youth League taking place inside the hall. In the melee that followed, over a dozen people were injured, with four people left dead [two people initially thought dead were later found in hospital - there were two deaths] and the attackers left in control of the hall.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-05-27-amnesty-report-says-something-rotten-in-state-of-south-africa

The report can be downloaded here. It, unlike this news report, does not make the mistake of saying that only Mpondo members of AbM were attacked in September.The attackers were chanting anti Mpondo slogans but AbM leaders of all ethnicities were attacked.

Amnesty report says something rotten in state of South Africa