Letter from the Editors of the Academic Journal “Interface”

To whom it may concern

Abahlali baseMjondolo has earned widespread respect from scholars and teachers
worldwide for its educational and research work as a “University of the Poor”. As
researchers and political activists, many of us with long-standing anti-racist commitments
in some cases going back to the anti-apartheid struggle internationally, we are
horrified to see the new South Africa, and the ANC, supporting attacks of this nature
on poor people’s movements.

We call on the police and ANC to defend those who are under attack rather than
criminalise poor people’s movements and lend themselves to xenophobic politics.

Laurence Cox, National University of Ireland
Elizabeth Humphries, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Ana Margarida Esteves, Brown University, USA