28 July 2040

Ubuhlali and the Generational Challenge of University Students

Closing Address for the Annual Canon Collins Trust Conference, Sandton, by S’bu Zikode

Thank you programme director, organizers of this conference, comrades and everyone. I must express my gratitude to the Canon Collins Trust management and leadership for inviting me here to participate in this important conference, themed “Power of Us” emphasizing connection and solidarity.

Like many people around the world, I was born into a poor rural family and made my way to the city looking for opportunity. Like many South Africans and Africans of my age I grew up in a war. In the city I found that the opportunity to study was denied to me, and to others like me, because we did not have money. I had to move into a shack and find work as a petrol attendant.

When I arrived in Durban in 1997 we still believed in the promise of the new South Africa as it was called then. We believed in peace, development and democracy.

There were thousands of people living in terrible conditions in the Kennedy Road shack settlement where I found a home. We urgently needed toilets, electricity and water, and then, of course, decent homes. To build homes for everyone we needed land.

The ANC promised all these things but it soon became clear that the party had been captured by people who wanted to pursue their own interests. When, in 2005, we organised a road blockade to demand that our councillor engage us we were called criminals and attacked. This is when we began to understand that insisting on our human dignity and asking to participate in discussions about our own lives would be taken and treated as criminal, that we were meant to remain poor and hidden in the dark corners.

Later that year people from twelve settlements united to form a movement, which we called Abahlali baseMjondolo. The ANC took our decision to form an autonomous and democratic movement committed to defending and advancing our human dignity as treason. They claimed that there must be someone else, a white man, remoting us, and that the white man must be remoted by a foreign government. They could not believe that we as poor black people could think for ourselves. They called us ‘the third force’.

The ANC tried to ban us from exercising basic democratic rights such as the right to peaceful protest, to engage in debates via the media and so on. When we went ahead with exercising these rights in defiance of their illegal bans and threats we were violently attacked. Many comrades were injured, and Philani Zungu and I were arrested and tortured by the police after we tried to travel to a radio station to participate in a discussion after the ANC had instructed us not to speak to the media. 

We had thought that the ANC were our only oppressors but we were surprised to find that a small group of academics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal who had an NGO thought that they should be the leaders of the left in Durban. At first they offered us money to accept their leadership. When we declined their money they went on an all-out attack presenting us as criminals, as people who could not think for ourselves and as people who had no political ideas of our own. They repeatedly concocted outright fraud, much of it deeply racist, to try and destroy our movement. Fraud is not critique. Fraud is outright lies. This would continue from 2005 until 2014. They even went so far as to deny us the right to respond to the fraud that they published to defame us. They have never been held accountable for this. 

We found that while some NGOs, such as the Socio-Economic Rights Institute, are able to work with oppressed people on the basis of a deep mutual respect many want to control the organisations of the oppressed and are willing to try and destroy them if they cannot control them.

In 2009 we were attacked by ANC supporters, acting with the clear support of the police, in the Kennedy Road settlement. Our leaders’ homes were destroyed, including mine, and our movement had to go underground. 

We were able to regroup and to begin organising openly. We continued our struggle for better conditions in the shack settlements, for decent housing, for land, for the right to participate in all discussions about us and relevant to us and for our human dignity to be recognised and respected. We also struggled against corruption.

In 2013 the ANC began to assassinate us. The assassinations stopped in 2014 but then continued in 2017. In 2022 we lost four comrades to assassination. In total we have lost 14 comrades to assassination and another 11 people have been killed in the course of our struggle, mostly at the hands of the police, the anti-land invasion unit and private security. 

Our members have also been jailed on trumped up charges, assaulted, had their homes destroyed and been tortured in police stations.

A number of our leaders have had to live under close protection and some people have had to go underground. I myself have had to go completely underground for two periods, something that is very difficult. You feel lost to the world.

The price for land, freedom and dignity has been paid in all kinds of suffering, and in blood.

Colonialism took the land and cattle of African people. It also took our right to decide for ourselves. It made most of us poor and most of us remain poor today. Freedom, real freedom, will restore the land to the people. It will share the wealth of the country fairly. It will deepen democracy until everyone has the same right to think, discuss and decide on the important issues that affect them.

Today we have 120 000 members in 87 branches in four provinces. We have won many, many victories for our members including access to land, water, sanitation and electricity. We have occupied land for living and worked to ensure that new settlements are carefully designed via processes of grassroots urban planning. We have ensured that all our branches are run democratically and that there is no buying and renting of land and shacks in our branches. We have defended our right to organise and taken our place in conversations about development, as well as national and international conversations. We have built many amazing leaders. 

We have also been able to provide an alternative to the politics of corruption. One example of this is that many political organisations that claim to be progressive were corrupted by the looting of money from VBS bank, a bank that mostly served poor rural people, many of them elderly. Our movement was approached by VBS in 2018 and we declined their offer of money. There are no excuses for corruption. It is a question of integrity and whether or not you are morally serious.

We have also been moving to turn occupations into communes where, along with democratic self-management and the decommodification of land, we have also begun to establish communes in which political schools and collective kitchens are built and run and in which we produce and distribute food on a collective basis, and do the same with money earned from selling the surplus.

All around the world the urban poor play a very important role in progressive struggles. In the lifetime of our movement this has been true in Haiti, Bolivia, Colombia, Brazil and many other places. The commune has emerged as the leading form of the struggles of the urban poor and the most important base for progressive politics. 

We also have strong connections with progressive movements and intellectuals from around the world, such as the MST in Brazil and Comrade Professor Ruthie Wilson Gilmour in the United States, among many others. We have worked with many radical students from all over the world, and have had wonderful experiences with many students. 

Colonialism was a global system. Racism is a global system of oppression. Sexism, xenophobia and homophobia are also global. Capitalism is a global system. The impoverishment of vast numbers of people is a global phenomenon. Organised abandonment is a global form of exclusion and domination. Our struggle is a global struggle, and we work to build a global movement of movements. 

We recognise the equal humanity of all people and welcome all people into our movement without regard for which country they were born in or which language they speak. We oppose all forms of xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, ethnic politics and racism very clearly and directly.

Wherever somebody stands up for justice that person is our comrade. 

People often ask us how we have kept going for 19 years despite so much repression, so much suffering, and so many lives lost. What we call inkani and what Palestinians call samud is an important part of it. It is a stubborn determination. Courage is also important. We sustain inkani and isibindi (courage) through being together. 

We also keep going because dignity is not only something that we struggle for in the future. Our movement is a place where the dignity of everyone is immediately affirmed. And our philosophy of ubuhlali, which is a kind of humanism, is also practiced here and now. Our commitment to a living politics, a living socialism, is rooted in these ideas, which are ideas that give our lives and struggle meaning in the present as well as guiding us into the future.

We do not only struggle for ourselves. We are in solidarity with the struggles and progressive organisations of oppressed people all over the world, from Swaziland to Brazil to Palestine to Turkey and Haiti. We build our humanity in our own organisation and struggle and in our solidarity with other people and their struggles and organisations. 

If we were silent while death crashes down on the people of Palestine and DR Congo, death organised and funded by the same powers that tell the countries of the global south to obey their authority in the name of democracy, our own humanity will be diminished.

As young people with energy and intelligence, and the opportunity to study, and then perhaps to travel, my hope is that you use all of this opportunity to work for a just world in which the humanity and dignity of all is respected. Many students and academics of good faith ask us how they can be solidarity with the poor, with the oppressed. 

The answer that we always give is that humility is essential. It is necessary to humble yourself. Nothing is possible without humility. Once there is humility there can be mutual respect and people who have been to university can think with the oppressed rather than trying to think for the oppressed. We all have much to learn from each other.

Once there is humility students and academics can learn to listen. You cannot respect the equality and the dignity of people if you are not able to really listen to them. There is no emancipatory politics without listening to others. You cannot say that you are on the side of the people, that you are with the people, if you do not take them seriously as people with ideas of their own. We build our humanity through listening.

Humility is also necessary for people who have studied at universities to be able to work with democratic structures in a movement rather than trying to use their access to money, the media and institutions to try and take control of movements or to divide movements. Many people in universities and NGOs operate by giving money to individuals in movements in exchange for these individuals taking forward their programmes and projects. This is always damaging to movements.

For us while all people must be recognised as human beings, and while we are human beings together, and while the dignity of every person must be respected, and while it is necessary to insist and to ensure that every person is a person, people can become more human by deepening their personal integrity and their relationships with others. There are academics who we introduce as abantu, as full persons. We will say that a person who engages the struggles of the oppressed with integrity, dedication, courage and respect is umuntu.

The great revolutionary philosopher Frantz Fanon said that every generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it. We have tried to discover our generational mission and to fulfil it. You too, as young people, will have to discover your generational mission, to resist the temptation to betray it and to work to fulfil it. You will need humility, you will need inkani, you will need isibindi, and you will need togetherness. Nobody can be alone in a struggle. One must be a person among other people, a comrade among other comrades. 

I wish you success, luck and joy as you move forward with your studies. Remember that the system of oppression often uses education to bring intelligent people into the system of oppression. Remember that you can always choose to not just be on the side of the oppressed but to be in struggle and solidarity with the oppressed as we struggle for a world where the dignity of all human beings is respected, and where land, wealth and power are shared fairly.

I thank you.

16 July 2024

Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

An Important Judgment in the Supreme Court of Appeal

Last week, on 10 July the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) issued its judgment in the matter of South Africa Human Rights Commission v The City of Cape Town. The Court found that municipalities have no legal right to evict people who are in the processes of constructing a home (once that construction has begun) without first obtaining a court order under the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act 19 of 1998 (PIE) or obtaining other legal sanction.

Our movement was admitted as a friend of the court (amicus curiae) in the matter and we were represented by our longstanding comrades in the Socio-Economic Rights Institute. 

The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) brought the matter against the City of Cape Town after the unlawful eviction of residents of the eThembeni shack settlement in Khayelitsha, Cape Town in July 2020 during the Covid shutdown. 

There were many unlawful and violent evictions during the Covid shutdown, including in Durban, but this eviction became a national scandal after Bulelani Qolani was violently removed from his home, while he was naked. This was a cruel and unlawful attack on his human dignity that showed the world just how deeply the South African state, whether governed by the ANC or the DA, undermines the dignity of the poor. In fact it is clear that we are hated.

Our lawyers argued that the city cannot lawfully evict someone whose home is still in the process of construction simply by using the argument of ‘counter-spoliation’. The court found in our favour on this matter. The court also found that “on the facts in this appeal, the conduct of the City’s personnel did not only constitute a violation of the occupants’ property rights and to their belongings, but also disrespectful and demeaning.” 

As comrade Nomzamo Zondo, the leader of SERI, said “I am certain that the judgment’s emphasis on the behaviour of anti-land invasion units, outlawing the confiscation of possessions, and restating the obligation to treat people with dignity will significantly protect the landless.”

Our movement has lost two comrades, Samuel Hloele and Nkosinathi Mngomezulu, to armed attacks by the Anti-Land Invasion Unit in Durban and we welcome the SCA judgement as a huge victory for the poor and marginalised.

The judgment fundamentally changes the power relations between impoverished people and municipalities and private land owners. It shows, again, that there are important progressive commitments and possibilities with the Constitution and the laws derived from the Constitution that the organised poor should, working with progressive lawyers, use along with other strategies to resist the landlessness, precarity and violence suffered by impoverished people.

Our access to land and housing is always ultimately won by organisation and struggle. However, tactical use of the courts is an important component of our struggle, and has always been part of the struggles of the urban poor going back to the days of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union. We thank SERI for their commitment to our struggle and our movement and to the struggles and organisations of the oppressed in general.

Thapelo Mohapi 084 576 5117

Mqapheli Bonono 073 067 3274

Zandile Nsibande 073 611 8279

This speech was presented to the conference of the Development Studies Association by Thapelo Mohapi on 28 June 2024 on a panel organised by the Translocal Learning Network.

Everybody Thinks!

When our movement started in 2005 many of the people who founded the movement insisted that everybody thinks, and that the poor must be given the same right as everyone else to participate in all discussions and decision making affecting their lives and communities, as well as wider issues.

There were two reasons for this. One was that the ruling party and the government thought that its role was to think for poor people. The second was that some NGOs and academics also thought that their role was to think for poor people. This included liberals and the kind of leftists who see their role as giving political direction to the oppressed rather than working with the oppressed on the basis of mutual respect.

It is important to understand that colonialism did not just expropriate land and cattle from African people, and then labour. It also expropriated the right of African people to make decisions about their own lives and communities. Just as we struggle for land to be returned to the people, and to be shared fairly among the people, and just as we struggle for wealth to be restored to the people, and to be shared fairly among the people, we also struggle for the right of all people to be able to participate in all discussions and decision making.

This is why we adopted the slogan ‘Nothing for us without us!’ which was originally developed by the disabled movement in the United Kingdom. This is why we adopted the phrase ‘grassroots urban planning’ from our comrades in the urban movement in Brazil. This is why Ashraf Cassiem, the leader of the militant Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign developed the slogan ‘We are poor not stupid!’.

We insist that the poor must be afforded the opportunity to be part of their own development whether this is autonomous self-organised development from below or development that emerges from engagement between the oppressed and the state and NGOs.

It is often perceived that when you are poor and living in shack settlements, former Bantustans or on white farms, you cannot think about how the future development of your community must take shape. This is often the perception of the Western donors who fund governments and NGOs in Africa. This is seen as a ‘realistic’ view and the idea that poor people can think and plan for ourselves is dismissed as ‘romantic’. 

Such thinking leads to development being imposed on communities, sometimes at gun point. Sometimes some people in communities, a small minority, are paid to support the development against the majority who do not support this. This divides communities and leads to tensions and revolts in communities. Sometimes what is called ‘development’ is actually just more oppression, such as when people are forcibly removed from centrally located shack settlements to human dumping grounds far from the cities, dumping grounds where there are no opportunities for people. All this could be avoided if poor people were taken seriously as people, as people with the same right to participate in discussions and decisions as all other people. Being poor does not mean that your capacity to think for yourself has collapsed. Every human being can think. Being poor means that you don’t have money, not that you don’t have a mind.

Many communities who have occupied land in our movement have planned their development without the interference of government and NGOs in the community. Autonomy, self-organisation and self-management have achieved some incredible results, radical results. 

One example is the eKhenana land occupation in Durban which was developed into a commune. There you can see the results of careful, collaborative grassroots urban planning with well laid out homes as well as a communal garden, a communal poultry project, as well as a Political School that is named after the great revolutionary intellectual Frantz Fanon. A high price was paid for this. Three comrades were assassinated. 

No government or NGO official would understand the need to centre development around a political school. This is because the poor are seen as victims who need services to be ‘delivered’ not as political protagonists who want to change the world from below. For us building communes means building the political power of the poor from below as well as meeting basic material needs.

Not long ago the municipality tried to evict Hlanganani (meaning ‘coming together’), one of our occupations in Salt Rock, on the north coast of KwaZulu-Natal. The people in the community resisted the eviction and forced the municipality to listen to them. They refused to be treated as human waste and protested to demand their recognition as human beings. This led to the municipality in KwaDukuza to finally recognising them as people and giving them the dignity that they deserve. Respectful engagement is usually something that must be struggled for. 

Today the community are part of the development in their community. They discuss and plan as a community on how the area can be developed. This has made the work of the municipal officials much easier. The development will not only provide housing, it will also provide skills that will create employment opportunities beyond the development. This happens because the community is part of the development. 

We have made real progress with both completely autonomous forms of development and forms of development with the state, but in both cases progress is only possible when people insist on the right to think and decide for themselves. In both cases people had to be organised and had to resist the forces of repression before progress could be made.

Often when people refuse to be treated as people who can’t think and have no right to think the first response of the state (or NGOs, academics, etc) is to claim that someone is else is thinking for them, remoting them from behind, and to criminalise the community or its leaders.

We don’t need think tanks to think for us. We don’t need people who have never lived in a shack settlement to think for us. We need people who are willing to think with us. For university educated people this requires that they are willing to humble themselves, to understand that they are people among other people. People can learn important skills in universities but these skills need to be brought into conversation with the people, with the organic thinking of the people.

A radical state, NGO or academic should understand the difference between charity provided to victims of history and solidarity with people who are committed to making history, to changing the world. Development should be about popular political empowerment as well as meeting basic material needs.

Everybody thinks!

1 July 2024

Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Solidarity with our Kenyan Comrades

Twenty four lives have been lost in the successful struggle against the Finance Bill in Kenya. The bill was pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to force ordinary poor and working class people to pay off debts to rich countries. It proposed extreme tax hikes on basic necessities such as vegetables, cooking oil, sanitary pads and nappies. 

In all countries it is important to tax the rich and big business, and to nationalise certain industries under worker control, to fund social programmes. Along with land reform and other measures taxation and nationalisation have always been important tools for progressive governments. However raising taxes on basic necessities, necessities that should in fact be subsidised rather than taxed, is nothing but an attack on the poor and the working class in the interests of the rich. 

Neoliberal policies have always been against the poor and caused severe suffering to the marginalised. This bill would have immediately worsened the very dire situation that many Kenyans already confront.

The Kenyan state, which is a client state of the US, has a long history of using lethal violence against the poor and against political dissent. It has now shown that it is willing to send its soldiers to Haiti to continue the oppression of the Haitian people without the West having to be seen sending its own soldiers to Haiti. The Kenyan elites also have a long history of turning people against each other along ethnic lines.

Young people came to together across ethnic lines to oppose the Finance Bill building unity and power in struggle. They were on the streets since the bill was first put on the table for the president to sign and they forced President Ruto to withdraw the bill.

At the same time as Kenyans were coming together in struggle, led by courageous young people, Kenyan soldiers were arriving in Haiti to continue the oppression of the Haitian people.

The Police Reform Working Group of Kenya has reported that there are a number of activists who have been abducted and are still unaccounted for. This kind of police brutality is common across Africa, and elsewhere in much of the world too. It is used to teach fear, to teach people that it is dangerous to question a government and safer to keep quiet and accept oppression. It is used to ensure impunity for oppressors.

We are encouraged by the struggle that the people of Kenya have waged, especially the youth who faced armed police head on demanding that the Finance Bill be scrapped. We celebrate their courage and the victory that was won when the president had to concede to the power of the people and withdraw the bill. This is a victory won by popular power. We must honour those who died for this struggle. 

We are calling on the African Union and the United Nations to intervene and ensure that justice is done for those who have lost their lives fighting against this regime. Police officers who killed innocent protesters and the politicians who gave them their orders must be brought to book. 

Progressive organisations in Kenya such as the Mathare Social Justice Centre and the Organic Intellectuals Network have become important contributors to the Pan-African and international left and a number of members of our movement have visited Kenya over the years. It is very encouraging to see the growth of the left in Kenya, especially among young people.

The struggle of the Kenyan people is an encouragement to all the struggles of the oppressed and working class. It our struggle too. We are in full solidarity with our Kenyan comrades and support their calls for the immediate resignation of President Ruto and the immediate recall of the Kenyan soldiers from Haiti. Kenyans must be given full political freedom and an economy redesigned to benefit the poor and the working class. Haitians must be given the freedom to elect their own leaders free from Western interference and to shape their own future.

The situation in Kenya is also a warning for us in South Africa. Now that the ANC has not been able to win an outright electoral victory the liberals are pushing hard for new government to adopt neoliberal economic policies and to become a client state of the West. They often present Kenya as an example that South Africa should follow. If the liberals do succeed in imposing neoliberal economic policies on South Africa poor and working class South Africans we follow the example of uprising in Kenya

We send our deepest condolences to the families, friends and comrades over all those who have given their lives in the struggle for a better Kenya.

An injury to one is an injury to all. 

A victory for one is a victory for all.

Thapelo Mohapi 084 576 5117

Mqapheli Bonono 073 067 3274

Zandile Nsibande 073 611 8279

10 May 2024
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Abahlali mourns the George building disaster

The tragedy of the building that collapsed on the workers in George is one more sign that the working class are always at risk as a result of capitalism.

The working class are most often at the receiving end when disasters of this nature take place. So far there are 14 people who have been confirmed dead and many more people are still trapped in the rubble, including an 18 year old migrant worker. Continue reading →

This statement was included in S’bu Zikode’s speech given today at UnFreedom Day 2024.

 21 April 2024

 The People’s Minimum Demands and Abahlali’s position on Election 2024

 Abahlali baseMjondolo Special Announcement on the May 29, 2024 General Election made at the Unfreedom Day Rally

In the 19 years since our movement was founded we have struggled to liberate ourselves from the chains of poverty, indignity and repression. We have organised in our communities, built new communities on occupied land and taken our struggle into the streets, the media, negotiations and the courts. We have built strong relations with radical movements and intellectuals around the world. While our politics has always been grounded in building popular democratic power from below, and working towards building a national movement of communes and a global movement of movements, we have, since 2006, made various kinds of tactical interventions in elections while remaining autonomous from all political parties. Continue reading →

21 April 2024

Iminyaka engamashumi amathathu yosizi nenhlupheko kwabampofu

Inkulumo ka Mongameli waBahlali baseMjondolo, Sbu. Zikode ngosuku loku Ngakhululeki (Unfreedom Day)

Mphathi wohlelo, baholi baba hlali baseMjondolo ngokuhlukana kwenu, baholi bemibutho yonke yemiphakathi, basebenzi, baholi bezombusazwe, partners, manene namanenekazi, MaGoza Amahle.

Umbutho wabahlali baseMjondolo wasungulwa eminyakeni eyishumi nesishiyagalolunye eyadlula. Usungulelwa ukulwela , ukuvikela nokuthuthukisa isithunzi sabantu abahlala emijondolo.  Continue reading →

19 April 2024
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

We Will Mark UnFreedom Day in Durban on 21 April

 There is no freedom for the poor in South Africa. Thirty years after Nelson Mandela became president and we were told that freedom had come the poor and marginalised in shack settlements, hostels, white farms and former Bantustans have nothing to celebrate.

The rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer. Far more people live in shacks than in 1994. We remain landless and without work. Millions are without even the most basic services, such as water, sanitation and refuse removal. Millions are hungry. We continue to live in terrible violence. We continue to be violently repressed by the politicians, the police and private security companies. For thirty years our humanity has been vandalized in the name of freedom. The lives and dignity of the poor mean nothing in the eyes of the ANC. Continue reading →

17 April 2024
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Private Security Firm Attacks the Sihlalangenkani Occupation in Umhlali

On 7 April the notorious private security firm IPSS, with support from the SAPS, launched an attack on the Sihlalangenkani Occupation in Umhlali, on the North Coast. The occupation is affiliated to our movement. The attack was unlawful and violent.

People’s doors were kicked in and people were assaulted, insulted, and threatened by men wielding automatic weapons. Many people were kicked, including women. The police fired rubber bullets at the residents. Money was also stolen. People who tried to film the attack were threatened. The police boasted that they have been instructed by police minister Bheki Cele to shoot and kill. The residents were dehumanised and the whole community criminalised. Continue reading →

7 April 2024
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

 Election 2024: The People’s Minimum Demands

Beginning at the General Assembly held in Durban on the first Sunday in February Abahlali baseMjondolo has held an extensive process of meetings and discussions at all levels of our movement, and in all our 87 branches in good standing across the four provinces where we have members, to develop a collective strategy for the election to be held on 29 May 2024. The Youth League and Women’s League also held their own discussions. The discussions in our monthly General Assemblies have all been open to the public and have been attended by representatives from a number of other organisations. We also held a successful voter registration drive with the aim of mobilising all of our more than 120 000 members in good standing to participate in the election, and to encourage others to do the same.  Continue reading →