Monday, 27 May 2013
The Power of Organizing the Urban Poor to Advance Tenure Security
Presentation by S'bu Zikode at the Regional Consultation on Security of Tenure called by UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Raquel Rolnik, in Johannesburg.
It is always a pleasure to write and speak on the organising strategies and tactics of Abahlali baseMjondolo. I wish to take this opportunity to thank SERI and the Ford Foundation for including our movement in this special consultation. More importantly I wish to thank the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, for calling this meeting. We had a very good relationship with the previous Rapporteur, Miloon Kothari, who we hosted in the Kennedy Road shack settlement in Durban in 2007. We are happy to welcome Raquel Rolnik to South Africa. When we formed our movement in 2005 we made it very clear that talking about us was not the same as talking to us and that we were determined to take our place in all discussions about our lives and futures. We are a democratic membership based organisation and we can take our place in a discussion like this in confidence that we represent our members rather than donors, projects or narrow political agendas.