23 August 2022
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement
Picket outside court tomorrow, memorial and funeral dates for Mnguni announced
Tomorrow the killers of Nokuthula Mabaso will be appearing in court for a bail hearing. Pastor Samson Ngubane and his brother who are in custody for the murder of Mabaso, will appear in court. Mabaso was leader of the Women’s League in eKhenana, and also played a very instrumental role in the eKhenana Commune.
There will be a picket outside the Durban Magistrates Court to demand that justice is undertaken in a serious and genuinely impartial manner.
Mabaso was murdered when Samson Ngubane’s son was about to appear in court for the murder of Ayanda Ngila. Now that Samson Ngubane is about to appear in court for the murder of Mabaso there has been another murder.
The Memorial Service for the late Comrade Lindokuhle Mnguni will take place this Thursday, 25th August 2022, at the eKhenana Commune. This will be followed by the funeral which will take place on Sunday 28th August 2022.
We will give our leader a dignified memorial and a dignified funeral. We will ensure that in death Mnguni is given the dignity he and the people of eKhenana did not receive in life from the ANC government.
The last few days have been difficult and straining for Abahlali baseMjondolo. The repression and the attacks at gunpoint have led to four of our members, including three leaders, being killed in a space of six months. Three of the killings were assassinations. The killings of Ayanda Ngila, Lindokuhle Mnguni and Nokuthula Mabaso at the eKhenana Commune were well planned and well financed by those who have vested private interests in the land that the community is using as a communal space. Siyabonga Manqele was murdered by masked police officers during a raid on the nearby eNkanini occupation.
The revival of eKhenana continues despite these attacks in the occupation. The garden and the poultry have already been kick started.
Many of our comrades from around the world have sent their support for the late comrade Mnguni, the eKhenana Commune and our movement. We really appreciate the solidarity that we have received from all over the world. We have always been committed to building a global movement of movements.
Lindokuhle Mnguni will not only be missed by the community of eKhenana. He will be missed by the more than 100 000 members of Abahlali baseMjondolo, and especially those who have interacted with him in various ways. He was well known in the movement for his courage, his kindness and his progressive politics.
He is leaving us with a legacy, the strategy of building communes from below as a space for survival, autonomy and democracy for those who are marginalised. He understood that in order for people to survive and build an autonomous and democratic politics they need to create their own communes. He saw the movement becoming a movement of communes, and this being the basis for a practice of living socialism. He fought for living socialism until his last days.
In a talk organised by The Forge he made it clear that he had committed himself to socialism or death.
His life was sacrificed for the people of eKhenana, for Abahlali baseMjondolo, and for the struggle for a just world.
We will continue with the struggle in his name.
Contact:
Thapelo Mohapi 084 576 5117
Mqapheli Bonono 073 067 3274
Bathabile Makhoba 081 360 2461