Category Archives: electricity

The Burning Season is Here

05 July 2016
Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA

The Burning Season is Here

Shack fires are a constant danger. But that danger becomes more serious in winter. This is because during winter people who are living in shacks are trying to keep warm. As a result people resort to making fires which increases the risk of their homes being burnt. There was a serious fire in the Foreman Road settlement in Durban in the past month leaving hundreds of people destitute. On Sunday five people lost their lives in the fire that burnt down the Plastic View settlement in Pretoria. On the same day another fire broke out in the Kenville settlement in Durban which left 76 families without homes and their documents, work clothes and school uniforms burnt. Continue reading →

The Struggle for Human Dignity Continues in the Shadow of Death

Friday, 12 February 2016

Abahlali basemjondolo press statement

 

The Struggle for Human Dignity Continues in the Shadow of Death

Life is always difficult in the shacks. If you are poor and black you can be killed with impunity. But it is not only the politicians and their izinkabi, or the police or private security companies that take our lives. We live in life threatening conditions every day. We die in the fires, from disease, drugs and crime. Our children die from diarrhoea. Our neighbours die because the roads next to the settlements are not made safe for pedestrians. The economy excludes us. The development of the cities excludes us. We are denied access to land, electricity, water, housing, education and work. We are also denied the right to participate in the discussions about the future of our society and in decision making about our lives and communities. Continue reading →

“Where there is fire, there is politics”: Ungovernability and Material Life in Urban South Africa

Kerry Chance, Cultural Anthropology

This article combines theories of liberal governance, material life, and popular politics to examine the unruly force of fire in state-citizen struggles. Tracking interactions between state agents and activist networks during South Africa’s celebrated democratic transition, I analyze how the urban poor leverage the material properties of fire to secure techno-institutional claims to energy infrastructure, and more broadly to political inclusion and economic redistribution. I highlight how fire, as a social and historical as well as a chemical process, becomes a staging ground for the promise and endangerment of infrastructure. Approaching fire as intertwined with power, I argue, illuminates how those living on the margins of the city come to inhabit political roles that transform economic relationships in the context of liberalism.

Click here to read this article.

ISiyanda branch celebrates Electricity Installation, its Sixth Anniversary & Re-launches its Branch

Friday, 27 March 2015
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

ISiyanda branch celebrates Electricity Installation, its Sixth Anniversary & Re-launches its Branch

It is with great pleasure that impoverished people on our own can achieve what was thought to be impossible sometime ago. It is with great pleasure that Abahlali can organise to build our power from below to use the state to develop and transform the lives of the impoverished without seeking permission from politicians or giving up our autonomy to the ruling party.

The neglected community of Siyanda VN Naik, just like many other Abahlali communities, has been denied the right to land and housing. We have been denied the right to essential services such as water and sanitation and electricity. When we started our movement in 2005 these services were denied to all shack dwellers in Durban. The government claimed to provide water but there would be a few taps for settlement of thousands of people. They claimed to provide sanitation but this only existed on paper. They openly refused to provide us with electricity claiming that our settlements, even when they were more than 30 years old, were ‘temporary’. Continue reading →