Daily News: Violent campaign against homeless people’s group

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Violent campaign against homeless people’s group
The Kennedy 8 are the new Rivonia trialists, writes Jared Sacks

October 12, 2009 Edition 1

Jared Sacks

I was at the bail hearing for the “Kennedy 8” on Thursday when they were denied bail and sent to the notorious Westville prison.

I had come to Durban from Cape Town to meet up with staff members of the Clare Estate Drop-in Centre, which operated in Kennedy Road until the recent attacks, when it was ransacked and forced to close. The CEDIC had supported hundreds of orphaned and other vulnerable children from the community and also helped run a community creche next door.

I attended the hearing because I wanted to find out for myself what had been happening in Kennedy Road since September 26.

At the hearing, about 100 or so members of the social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo packed the court room. A few hundred who could not fit inside waited patiently in the adjacent foyer.

They all knew exactly why there were at the hearing. One replied to my questions: “To support our friends and fellow Abahlali who were wrongly arrested by the corrupt Sydenham Police!”

But why were there hundreds of community members there to support eight people that our government has labelled as criminals?

It seems, if one thinks about things logically, that there are a few facts which have come out that we all can agree on.

On the night of Saturday, September 26, a mob of about 40 armed people attacked an Abahlali baseMjondolo youth meeting. A number of people died during the incident.

Many people were displaced by the attacks. Finally, the eight arrested residents of Kennedy Road are self-identified members of Abahlali baseMjondolo.

Since the above are agreed facts, we should therefore be asking a key question which, I believe, exposes an important contradiction in the story being publicised by the MEC:

Why is it that, if the attacks targeted Abahlali members, the police, with the support of the MEC, arrested only members of the same Abahlali movement?

According to this kind of logic, the MEC and the police are effectively saying that Abahlali baseMjondolo attacked itself!

But if this were true, then why are Abahlali united in supporting the Kennedy 8? Why is the AbM youth league, which was attacked, claiming the Kennedy 8 are innocent?

Here is the key contradiction in Mchunu’s claims. This contradiction shows that the MEC’s version of the events is riddled with misinformation.

During the course of the day, about 100 ANC members – fully clad in Zuma election T-shirts – arrived on a chartered bus at the magistrate’s court and began chanting:

“Down with Abahlali base-Mjondolo!” and singing ANC freedom songs. I went over and spoke to some of them, but they didn’t seem to know why there were at the court house.

They claimed that they were residents of Kennedy Road, but when I asked them if they were here to support the people who were arrested, some of them said that they were. Others were visibly unsure.

When I inquired further, they didn’t seem to know anything about any ‘forum’ terrorising the community. Nor did they know anything about supposed curfews being imposed in Kennedy Road.

Only the leader of the group seemed to know why they were protesting. I left them and walked back inside the court more cynical than ever: did they know anything at all about their own community?

Were they even from Kennedy Road?

After a little over two hours of chanting and singing (and many hours before the bail hearing actually took place), they left on the same chartered bus in which they came.

Much later, at about 3pm, Abahlali members walked out of Court 10 with frowns and a few tears. The Kennedy 8 had been denied bail.

When thinking about yesterday’s events, some questions remain: Why is it that only people wearing Zuma shirts are saying down with Abahlali baseMjondolo?

Why would the ANC hire a bus to bring people to the court who don’t even know what they are protesting about?

Yet again, empirical evidence points to only one logical conclusion: there is an ANC campaign against the social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.

The local ANC structures are mobilising to complete their takeover of Kennedy Road.

Why else would Mchunu, who is also a provincial ANC leader, claim to have “liberated” Kennedy Road?

Why else would the MEC claim that his people are the independent investigators into the attacks while all of civil society are demanding a genuine investigation into the attacks which are not made up of ANC cadres?

I also spoke to a member of the Kennedy Road community yesterday who had not yet fled and who used to volunteer at the CEDIC.

She says that because she is an Abahlali member, she has personally been threatened by the ANC committee that was just installed in the settlement. She claims this committee is the same people as the leaders of last week’s militia attacks.

But she says she cannot leave Kennedy. She has no family in Durban. She has nowhere else to go…

Sacks is the Executive Director of the Children of South Africa (CHOSA).