Friday – July 21, 2006 3:26 PM

So, yesterday, Abahlali finally got their meeting with the exulted office of Mike Mabayakulu.

The meeting was consequent to the march on Mabayakulu on the 27th of February – the march that was banned by Sutcliffe’s ilegal diktat which was enforced with helicopters and armoured cars and dogs and all the rest and then undone by Abahlali in the high court – a victory that was quickly concretised with a sea of red outside the city hall.

A couple of months after the march a meeting was promised by fax. No date was set. Abahlali set up a telephone toyi toyi network to keep up the pressure. Finally the meeting was set.

A delegation of ten people from 6 different settlements was elected and mandated.

They met in Kennedy Road yesterday morning for final planning and to strengthen everyone for the meeting.

At the meeting Abahlali were subjected to the usual mixture of authoritarianism and paternalism. Essentially they were told that:

– the meeting could not deal with particular cases, only general policy
– that the policy was slum clearance and the prevention of slum re-emergence
– that the national government is committed to slum clearance by 2010 but in KZN it will be done by 2010
– that disasters like fires etc are ‘man-made’ and not the fault of government
– that all complaints about the policy are ‘out of order’ because this is the ANC which is the government of the people
– that the only complaints that will be entertained are about corruption within the policy but these must be made, in specific detail, through the right channels
– that members of Abahlali who already have houses and are just struggling to get more houses will, together with those who are agents for foreign intelligence agencies, be arrested
– that they know that Abahlali’s vast funding comes from foreign governments via ‘agents’
– that the government is committed to public participation and constructive consultative processes but that if Abahlali wants to participate in these processes they must join Shack Dwellers’ International

There were lots of valiant fight backs. Mnikelo Ndabankulu put it bluntly: ‘It is the policy that is oppressing us. Moving us out of the city is the same as apartheid’. Naturally he was ruled ‘out of order’. Naturally he was cool with that.

After the meeting Mrs Mota from Motala Heights and some others went straight to Joe Slovo where women speaking out against corruption and the exclusion from the housing list of people that have been speaking out and struggling (and/or who are Pondo) have suffered all kinds of intimidation including the laying of false charges such as assault etc. Abahlali have organised legal support but the local police station, which is in Chatsworth, have simply refused to accept affidavits from women in the Joe Slovo settlement. As in Clare Estate people experience the open contempt from the Indian policemen to be highly racialised. So Abahlali, from Joe Slovo, from Motala Heights and other settlements occupied the police station. There was the usual stand off with escalating tension but the Abahlali wouldn’t move. The affidavits were taken. The women from Joe Slovo won a small victory.

Clearly the fighting spirit will not be easily ground down by attempts to present policy as an immutable fact of life and subordination to a (foreign funded!) NGO as the limit of democratisation.

When the taxi loaned for the day finally got back to Kennedy Road Jerome Bhengu, who runs the fruit stall at the entrance to the settlement asked ‘Did they move?’ When told that in the MEC’s office they hadn’t moved at all he replied ‘Fuck them. It’s time to block the road again’.

Onward, as Raj Patel likes to say.

Richard