Notes on Gentrification for the Manchester Conference
August 2009

defining ourselves

We are here as elected delegates of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the South African shackdwellers' movement. We approach each challenge and opportunity from within our own 'living politics' which the President of our movement, S'bu Zikode has described as a politics that:

starts from the places we have taken. We call it a living politics because it comes from the people and stays with the people. It is ours and it is part of our lives. ... It is the politics of our lives. It is made at home with what we have and it is made for us and by us.

Ngicelwe ukuba ngikhulume ngokuthi “kungaliwa kanjani noMbuso?” Lo ngumbuzo onzulu, anginazo izimpendulo ezilula

ibhalwe ngu – Arundhati Roy yahunyushelwa esiZulwini ngu – Nontobeko Hlela

Uma sikhuluma ngokuphikisana no “Mbuso”, kudingeka sizibuze ukuthi “uMbuso” uchazani? Ngabe uchaza uhulumeni waseMelika (kanye namazwe ezwa yona ase-Europe), iBhange lomhlaba (World Bank), inhlangano yezizwe ebheka izindaba zezimali (International Monetary Fund), noma inhlangano yomhlaba ephathelene nezokuhweba na (World Trade Organization)? Noma mhlawumbe yinto engaphezulu kwalokhu.

The Award of Hope!

It came as a surprise to be awarded the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Trophy at the third annual graduation ceremony for the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo. Not only was I surprised by my achievement, but I ran out of words as well. The Kennedy Road Community Hall was packed to capacity as the Master of Ceremonies cleared his voice and began the announcement that changed my life, saying, 'The Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award goes to ………eh……this young man, who comes aaaaaall the waaaaay from …………… Zimmmmmmmmmmmmmmmbabweeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ……………!'

Lewis Gordon, New Introduction to Steve Biko's I Write What I Like

Steve Bantu Biko was a courageous man. This is not to say that he was callously neglectful of the value of life, including his own, but rather he was a man for whom life was so valuable that the fear of death could be transcended. The consequence was that he found a way for word and deed to meet and thus to achieve the urgently political and the genuinely liberating. Brutalized to death in the flesh, he left his words to unfold through three decades in a continued challenge to every human being to carry on the fight for our humanity. Dust though his body has become, his ideas live on.

Amazwi omhumushi

Ibika ngu-Neville Alexander

Onxiwankulu ne-Sigaba Sabasebenzi

Abasebenzi namadlela-ndawonye

Umthapho wezincwadi Zobudlela-ndawonye
nobu-Khomanisi

Imibono yama-Khomansi mayiqhathaniswa
naleyo yezinye Izinhlangano Eziphikisayo

Uhlu lwezincasiselo

Uhlu Lokuphakathi

Amazwi Omhumushi

Baningi abantu abanginike usizo ukuhumusha lomsebenzi, kakhulukazi ngibonga lamaqabane: Steve, Veli, Salim, Patrick, Lenore, Jane, Neville kanye namanye amalunga we-WOSA afake isandla ukuze lomsebenzi uphethwe.

Ngibonge futhi amaqabane ase-Swideni: Carina, Linn, Peter.
Ngithemba ukuthi lomsebenzi esiwuqalile uzongenelwa iningi

Haitian inspiration: On the bicentenary of Haiti’s independence

by Peter Hallward in Radical Philosophy

Two hundred years ago this month (January 2004), the French colony of Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola became the independent nation of Haiti. Few transformations in world history have been more momentous, few required more sacrifice or promised more hope. And few have been more thoroughly forgotten by those who would have us believe that this history has since come to a desirable end with the eclipse of struggles for socialism, national liberation and meaningful independence in the developing world.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/winstanley/index.htm

Gerrard Winstanley (1649)

The True Levellers Standard Advanced: Or, The State of Community Opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men.

A Declaration to the Powers of England, and to all the Powers of the World, shewing the Cause why the Common People of England have begun, and gives Consent to Digge up, Manure, and Sow Corn upon George-Hill in Surrey; by those that have Subscribed, and thousands more that gives Consent.

In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another.

Abahlali has been an intellectually serious project from the beginning. Among the banners painted in Kennedy Road while people were singing against the army who were occupying the settlement the night before the second big march on Councillor Baig back in 2005 was a key slogan - the "University of Kennedy Road". After that a "University of Foreman Road" was declared when Foreman Road attempted to march on Mayor Obed Mlaba in defiance of an illegal march ban, and were beaten back with severe police violence, and then a "University of Abahlali baseMjondolo". When Abahlali marched, (entirely peacefully and to put a reasoned position) into the University of the state under this banner in late 2006 a number of 'left' intellectuals, in the precise manner of the state, declared them criminal in the national press! At that moment it was clear that competing elites in the state and the institutionalised left were united on the position that the poor should not think their own politics and that doing so, no matter how calmly, peacefully and rationally, rendered the movement 'out of order' and even criminal. Abahlali's intellectual project is founded on the decision that "when order means the silence of the poor then it is good to be out of order".

Our struggle is thought in action and it is thought from the ground at the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo. We define ourselves and our struggle.
-S'bu Zikode, October 2006

As much as all debates are good, fighting only by talking does not take us much further. Sometimes we need to strengthen our muscles for an action debate, that is a living debate that does not only end on theories.
-S'bu Zikode, 24 September 2007