10 February 2023
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement
Abahlali baseMjondolo is currently hosting an international movement conference
Our movement was founded in a commitment to solidarity with other struggles and movements, wherever they may be in the world. From the beginning we have worked, where possible, to build solidarity with struggles and movements elsewhere in the world, and we have often received amazing solidarity from around the world in times of crises, times when we are facing severe repression.
We have lost 24 activists in our struggle. If we were on our own we would be extremely vulnerable.
Over the years we have built ongoing forms of solidarity with movements in a common struggle, forms of solidarity that are not just active during times of crisis. These include Pudemo in Swaziland, the Poor People’s Campaign in the US, the MST in Brazil and many more others.
Our movement is also part of the Economic Social and Cultural Rights Network which is made up of more than 300 organisations and movements around the world. It has been an important vehicle for mobilisation international solidarity during times of crises.
We are currently hosting a gathering of 35 delegates from various movements – including delegates from Kenya, the US, Nigeria, Spain and Swaziland – in Durban. The meeting is behuing held in partnership with the Economic Social and Cultural Rights Network and will run from 7 to 11 February.
The decision for our movement to host the meeting was taken to show solidarity with us after we lost three comrades to assassination last year and another to a police murder, as well as numerous arrests and assaults, burning of our leaders’ homes and the vandalization of our self-built and managed infrastructure.
We are also using this meeting to build solidarity with our comrades in Swaziland and the Democratic Republic of Congo, including specific organisations such as Pudemo and the Congolese Solidarity Campaign, as well as the Amadiba Crisis Committee here in South Africa, along with other comrades who are organising against giant mining companies that want to appropriate, privatise and mine their land under the pretence of ‘job creation’.
During this meeting we are remembering and honouring fallen comrades such as Bazooka Radebe, Fikile Ntshangase and Thulani Maseko.
Our struggle is much broader than the struggle for land and housing. It is also a fight to insist on the inviolable dignity of every human being everywhere, a fight against inequality, a fight against capitalism and imperialism and a fight for socialism from below – for a world in which land, wealth and power are fairly shared, and democratically managed.
On Saturday our visitors will meet with comrades at the eKhenana Commune. We will also be joined by a group of radical trade unionists who are visiting from the US.
The struggle is global and we will not survive or progress without global struggle. In South Africa we are working to build a movement of communes, a movement that is part of a movement of movements across the region, across Africa and around the world.
Thapelo Mohapi 084 576 5117
Bathabile Makhoba 081 360 2461
Mqapheli Bonono 073 067 3234