Category Archives: The Return to Kennedy Road Campaign

Memorandum Handed to Senior Superintendent De Villiers of the Sydenham Police Station

Friday, September 28, 2012

MEMORANDUM HANDED TO SENIOR SUPERINTENDENT DE VILLIERS OF THE SYDENHAM POLICE STATION

Three years after the attack on our Movement, the Kennedy Road Displacees Remain Homeless and in Exile

We as men, women and children of the Kennedy Road settlement are gathered here tonight to express our deepest pain and suffering at being refused our right to citizenship, safety and freedom by a government that was meant to save all its people – blacks and whites, poor and rich, young and old and of all genders – from suffering, division and oppression with justice, equality and dignity.
Today, we remember with anger how our leadership, its families, our close friends and close comrades were attacked by the gang associated with the ruling party. Today we remember how our homes were destroyed, looted and burnt down for months – often in broad day light. Today we remember how all this happened in the presence of all state security forces without any of their assistance despite our please for their help. Today we remember how many of us had to deal with trauma in the dark confined corners without any state assistance. Today we remember how our children dreamt nightmares of the incidents. Today we remember how many of us had to leave their jobs and return to their dry rural areas with no jobs and no government presence and nothing but Ubuntu. Today we remember how the Kennedy 12, first the Kennedy 13 suffered in the hands of those who always claim that they liberated this country. Today we remember how our brothers were killed on these days.

Today we remember how the government of the day, from local to national, has pretended not to have seen and known our situation. Today we have learnt how poor people are treated in the new South Africa. Today we can rest assured that the government of the day will never care about the poor. Today we want the whole world to know that the same government they once supported has turned against its own people and become its new oppressors.

Today we make the following demands:

1. Land and safe homes for the displaced families
2. Return or compensation for all personal belongings lost in the attack
3. Immediate arrest of our attackers who still enjoy the protection of the state.
4. Healing process for these families
5. Re-integration in good faith of the displaced families that wish to return to Kennedy.
6. Participatory democracy
7. Real freedom and democracy.

Today we ask how much must we pay for our citizenship? Today we ask much longer shall we serve our sentence in exile?

Today we unite just like how many communities and workers are uniting around the country and around the world against injustices. We express our solidarity with comrades in the mines and everywhere injustices prevail.

Today we wish to state clearly that we will not allow repression by the ruling party and the police to destroy our struggle. We remain committed to the struggle for land, freedom and dignity.

Delivered at…………………………………………………on…………………………………………………………………………2012
Received by………………………………………………..

Three Years after the Attack on our Movement, the Kennedy Road Displacees Remain Homeless and in Exile

27 September 2012
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Three Years after the Attack on our Movement, the Kennedy Road Displacees Remain Homeless and in Exile

The attack on Abahlali baseMjondolo in 2009 set a tone for KwaZulu-Natal to become the province where warlordism and the assassination of leaders and activists has become the order of the day. It was also a warning to the poor that we should accept landlessness, homelessness and all forms of injustices and inequality as the order of the day if we want to survive this democracy.

It was on the night of the 26th, 27th and 28th of September 2009 that the whole political plot was concluded and carried out to assassinate the leadership of Abahlali. We know and we want the nation and the whole world to know that this plot was planned at a very high political level in our province. The plot was not just aimed at reigniting the politic of fear and assassination among those of us who refuse to accept fear. It was also aimed at tearing apart our movement – a movement that has brought us together, a movement that has made us realise how much power and value we have when we stand together. A movement that has shown us how we were made poor by colonial rule, by apartheid and by the post-apartheid state. A movement that has insisted that democracy means that everyone has the same right to participate in decision making and that the land, cities and wealth of our country must be shared and managed equally.

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Statement on the Return to Kennedy Road

21 August 2011
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Statement on the Return to Kennedy Road

Those members of the ANC that attacked our movement in September 2009, that banned our movement in the Kennedy Road settlement after the attack on the pain of death, that destroyed and looted our homes for months, that sold our sites to new people, that made death threats to state witnesses in the trial that followed the attack on our movement and attacked one witness and issued public death threats against many of us have now run to the media to say that they are scared of the return of the displacees to Kennedy Road. They have even gone to the police to ask that we must be prevented from returning to the settlement. They are trying to present themselves as victims.

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Displacees Return to Kennedy Road

Tuesday, 26 July 2011
Abahlali Press Statement

The Kennedy Road Development Committee, the Kennedy 12 and other Displacees Return to the Kennedy Road Settlement

Our acquittal in court without freedom to return to resetting our feet in Kennedy Road would be pointless.

The ruins of Mondli Mbiko's home in Kennedy Road

After two and half year the Kennedy Road Development Committee, members of the Kennedy 12 and their relatives, as well as some members of AbM, went to Kennedy Road on Sunday to check on their homes and sites that they were residing on when our movement was attacked. We were about a hundred people.

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