Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape Re-launches in Sweet Home Farm, East Phillipi

Saturday, 27 September 2014

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape Re-launches in Sweet Home Farm, East Phillipi

The situation at the Marikana Land Occupation in Durban remains tense after the attack by the local ANC yesterday. Last night black land rovers without number plates were driving around the area. However there have been no further attacks.

Today delegates from Abahlali in KwaZulu-Natal are with our comrades in Cape Town as part of our exchange visit and to witness democracy in action. This is an opportunity to share our struggles in our respective provinces and to learn from one another. The Sweet Home branch, our only active branch in Cape Town, will relaunch today.

Our movement has very clear conditions for membership. Individual members and branches need to renew their membership every year and each branch must relaunch and re-elect its leadership every year. We used to have a branch in

QQ Section in Khayelitsha but their membership expired in 2012 and has not been renewed since then. There are some residents in QQ Section who are interested in renewing their membership and have asked the movement to visit them. We will all use this opportunity to visit QQ Section and discuss way forward for those residents who wish to renew their membership and form a branch in good standing.

We have been quite concerned that for some years some NGOs in Cape Town have been regularly inviting people who are not members of our movement, and who have no mandate from our movement, to represent our movement in their meetings and workshops. It is very important that a movement has the right to define for itself who is and who is not a member. When NGOs think that they can decide who is a member of a movement, and who can represent a movement, this leads to all kinds of serious problems. In fact it is clear that some NGOs prefer to work with individuals that are not accountable to democratic membership based structures because these individuals are often willing to take instruction from the NGOs. For this reason we need to make it clear that at the moment we only have one branch in good standing in Cape Town and that is Sweethome Farm.

The launch will start this morning at 11:00 at Sweethome Farm Community Hall.

Please contact:

Syamboleka James, Abahalali Chairperson in Sweethome Farm on 073 0151454

Christina Mthandana, Abahlali Committe member in Sweethome Farm on 078 2161314

Ndabo Mzimela, Abahlali General Secretary on 063 0424607

Thembani Ngongoma, Abahlali National Spokesperson on 084 6139772