http://www.khayelitshastruggles.com/2010/11/why-poor-must-serve-life-sentence.html

Why the poor must serve life sentence within informal settlements?

When the poor takes to the street are being criticised, and labelled as ‘’irresponsible, mindless and violent’’ but when the poor are being attacked and shot at by police no one is saying anything.

Currently the weekend Argus on the 28th November 2010 reported that ‘A Gugulethu mother is in hospital in a state of shock after learning that her husband, their three children and her brother-in-law died in a shack fire that destroyed 10 homes in the Barcelona informal settlement on Friday night’. And it further relieved that 60 people had lost their lives in shack fires across the metropole this year.

When the poor died in these shack fires no one says anything, when the poor march to the municipality to demand water and electricity they are being accused of 3rd Force and when they took to the street and burn tyres they are being accused of being ‘reactionary and anarchist’

It is clear that it is not in the interest of any capitalist or political organization and their alliance partners to have the poor mobilising or organizing themselves out side their control and against them.

It is sad and shameful to force the poor to accept the appalling living conditions as normal and to pretend as if we are living under normal society by implying that “Freedom and social equality comes through patient organisation, education and sustained Struggle”

Being poor that does not mean people don’t know how to struggle properly and there will always be a difference between donor based struggle and community led struggle.

POWER TO THE POOR

BY: Mzonke Poni
ABM WC Chairperson
073 2562 036