http://stefandav.blogspot.com/2009/09/peter-hallward-will-of-people-notes.html

The Will of the People: Notes Towards a Dialectical Voluntarism

by Peter Hallward

By ‘will of the people’ I mean a deliberate, emancipatory and inclusive process of collective selfdetermination. Like any kind of will, its exercise is voluntary and autonomous, a matter of practical freedom; like any form of collective action, it involves assembly and organization. Recent examples of the sort of popular will that I have in mind include the determination, assembled by South Africa’s United Democratic Front, to overthrow an apartheid based on culture and race, or the mobilization of Haiti’s Lavalas to confront an apartheid based on privilege and class. Conditioned by the specific strategic constraints that structure a particular situation, such mobilizations test the truth expressed in the old cliché, ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’. Or, to adapt Antonio Machado’s less prosaic phrase, taken up as a motto by Paulo Freire, they assume that ‘there is no way, we make the way by walking it.’[1]

Txaboletan bizi direnak from elkartasunbideak on Vimeo.

Meaningful Engagement

The Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits, are hosting a colloquium on the topic of 'Meaningful Engagement' today. The speakers were asked to prepare and circulate their papers in advance. This is S'bu Zikode's contribution to the discussion.

I thank Lauren Royston and Kate Tissington for the opportunity to comment on the topic of meaningful engagement.

Our movement is always very happy to visit CALS. CALS is an important ally in the struggles of the poor and all our movements hold your organization in high respect. You have worked with us and not for us. You have not been scared to confront power whether it is the provincial government or a gangster landlord. We remember how Stuart Wilson sat taking instruction from Uncle James in Motala Heights while Ricky Govender’s thugs threw rocks at Uncle James’ house. We know how hard and how well Stuart and your team worked on the Slums Act case.

To see more short films by Elkartasun Bideak click here.

This film shows some of the first meeting between a community in Howick and AbM. Abahlali were invited to a meeting by the community as they are facing eviction and will have to struggle against the local chief and the state.

To see more short films by Elkartasun Bideak click here.

This interview was published in Interface in November 2009.

Click here to read an annotated version of this interview in pdf and here to read a summary.

To Resist All Degradations & Divisions
An interview with S’bu Zikode

Tell me something about where you were born and who your family were.

March 24, 2007
To the Editor, The Daily Sun

Dear Editor

On Wednesday 21 March, Human Rights Day, the police came to attack the people of the Kennedy Road settlement. It was about three in the morning. They kicked down people’s doors without knocking and asked for everybody’s names in each house. If your name was one they were looking for they just put you in their van.

The police don’t treat us right here at Kennedy. Everybody knows how they attack us when we try and march and how to punish us for marching they always arrest us, make us stay in the cells and come to court 4 or 5 times before dropping the charges. But they do other things too. They come to raid at night saying they are looking for dagga and stolen goods. When they raid they hit us, they insult us, they mess our houses up, they make the men do press ups and they steal our money and cell phones. They tell us that if we don’t give them our money they will arrest us. Because the police treat us like we are all criminals and because most of the police are themselves criminals we have our own Safety & Security Forum. This team is chosen to deal with crime in the community.