Category Archives: Raj Patel

Trump tweets about white farmers while indigenous peoples face annihilation

The Guardian

Raj Patel

Mon 27 Aug 2018 03.24 

Hundreds of indigenous Hondurans march in 2016 in demanding justice for the murder of indigenous environmentalist Berta Caceres.
 Hundreds of indigenous Hondurans march in 2016 in demanding justice for the murder of indigenous environmentalist Berta Caceres. Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

 

The first time Donald Trump tweeted about Africa, he agonised over white people. After watching Fox News’ coverage of the South African land debate last week, the President of the United States instructed his secretary of state to look into the “large scale killing of farmers”. Followers of Peter Dutton’s nine months tenure at Australia’s home affairs ministry will recognise the lie, peddled by the “alt-right”, that black South Africans are targeting white farmers. As the Guardian reported in June, farmer and farmworker murders are at a 20-year low.   Continue reading →

M&G: Open letter to James Nxumalo, Senzo Mchunu & Jacob Zuma

2 October 2013

To:

James Nxumalo, Mayor, eThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa

Senzo Mchunu, Premier, KwaZulu-Natal

Jacob Zuma, President, Republic of South Africa

We are writing to you to express our grave concern at events unfolding in the Cato Crest shack settlement in Durban.

After an illegal eviction in Cato Crest by the eThekwini Municipality in March this year, shackdwellers occupied an adjacent piece of land. They named the settlement “Marikana”. Since then, two activists have been assassinated -Thembinkosi Qumbelo and Nkululeko Gwala. A third, Nkosinathi Mngomezulu, is in critical condition after being shot by the Land Invasions Unit. A number of activists have been seriously beaten by the police. Other activists, including Bandile Mdlalose and S’bu Zikode of the shack dweller movement Abahlali baseMjondolo who have been supporting the residents, have been threatened with death.

Continue reading →

OZY: Is This Man the Next Nelson Mandela?

http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/sbu-zikode/1332.article

Is This Man the Next Nelson Mandela?

by Raj Patel

“The first Nelson Mandela was Jesus Christ. The second was Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. The third Nelson Mandela are the poor people of the world.”

These remarks, celebrating the release of 14 fellow activists from jail in 2005, were given by the leader of the biggest protest movement to hit South Africa since apartheid ended in 1994. His name is Sibusiso Innocent Zikode, or S’bu Zikode, and he is the founder of Abahlali baseMjondolo, Zulu for “people who live in shacks.” He delivered these comments in a settlement of 7,000 people with just seven working taps and no toilets, which tells you a lot about life in modern South Africa and about Zikode. Continue reading →

Epidemic of Rational Behaviour

(For the archive)

http://mg.co.za/article/2005-05-25-epidemic-of-rational-behaviour

25 May 2005

In March 19, 750 people from the Kennedy Road informal settlement in Clare Estate, Durban, blockaded Kennedy Road with burning tires and mattresses for four hours.

Residents in the informal settlement had been promised for more than a decade that a small spit of land in nearby Elf Road would be made available to them for the development of housing. They were participating in discussions about the development of this housing when bulldozers began clearing the land. People were shocked to be told that a brick factory was being built. Continue reading →