Tuesday – December 6, 2005 12:51 PM

Hi, just a note on democratic practice in abahlali base mjondolo.

So often democracy within movements and organisations has followed the same stolid thinking of any other bureucracy. People are elected to a positon (or simply assume it) and then occupy that position long after the circumstances in which that seemed to make sense have changed. Sometimes this get ludicrous with movements that haven’t existed for years having positions in movement fora while actually existing mass movements are excluded altogether. A democratic practice within struggle has to have structural mechanisms to take account of the fluidity of struggle and it has to take account of the fact that mass participation in decision making is vastly more democratic and renders movements vastly less vulnerable to co-option or co-ercion than representative approaches to democracy. A radically democratic approach also makes gender representation come right and ensures that lots of people get experience reducing dependency on individuals.

Abahlali base mjondolo is approaching decision making in a genuinely democratic manner. All movement meetings are preceding by community meetings at which representatives to the movement meetings are elected and mandated for that meeting only. If the movement meeting has to choose a delegation (or individuals) to undertake negotiations with council, meet with other movements or take a platform on the radio etc then people are elected and mandated for that one specific task. There is always a report back and discussion.

I’d guess that other organisations and movements are evolving similar radically democratic strategies but just thought it would be good to share this as it is working so well.

Richard