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Abahlali
baseMjondolo

LAND! HOUSING! DIGNITY!

Who we are

We are a movement of over 150,000 shack dwellers.

WE FIGHT for land and against the relentless vandalisation of our dignity.

WE LIVE in life-threatening conditions without water, sanitation, road access, waste collection, and electricity.

WE ENDURE sustained political repression, including assault, arrest, torture, imprisonment, murder, and the criminalisation of protests.

WE DEMAND land, housing, dignity, justice, and food sovereignty for all.

WE ARE Abahlali baseMjondolo — a democratic movement building power from below.


What we do

ORGANISING FROM BELOW
We work to grow democratic counter-power from below by building branches and creating spaces for thinking and resisting together.

RESISTING INJUSTICE
We resist evictions and repression, organise protests, provide legal support, and engage the media in our struggle against violence, corruption, and injustice.

RECLAIMING LAND
We occupy land to create places for people to live and build communities.

DEVELOPING COMMUNES
We strive to advance our occupations into vibrant communes that develop social infrastructure, produce food and work towards other forms of production.

We Demand
Land

Everyone deserves a fair share of the earth. We demand the redistribution of land for housing, community infrastructure, and farming. Land must be allocated on the basis of the public good and not private profit.

We Demand
Decent Housing

Every human being deserves a place to call home. We demand collective, secure tenure for all, the provision of water and sanitation, refuse collection, electricity, and other basic services in our settlements, and the participatory development of decent housing.

We Demand
Dignity

A society that dehumanises one, dehumanises all. We demand that people are treated with respect and dignity, regardless of class, race, gender, identity, religion, nationality and ethnicity.

We Demand
Justice

We honour and remember our comrades who have given their lives in the struggle for justice. We demand the end of political repression, and justice for those tortured, imprisoned, and assassinated.

We Demand
Food Sovereignty

As Burkinabe revolutionary Thomas Sankara said, “Those who feed you, control you.” Our fight for liberation and dignity is incomplete without sovereignty over our food systems. We demand the right to farmland in and close to our communities, and the right to produce and access healthy food.

About us

Abahlali baseMjondolo (The Residents of the Shacks) is a movement of the poor in South Africa. We are an autonomous, democratic, membership-based social movement comprising more than 150,000 members, operating in 93 branches in 4 provinces. We are committed to building the democratic power of the oppressed from below, and using our collective strength to create a world in which land, wealth and power are shared fairly. Our politics is rooted in a universal commitment to affirming and defending human dignity as we struggle for land and housing, to foster communities of care, self-nourishment, and solidarity.

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