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We are the restless majority
Why is so little being spent at grassroots level where most of our people live and suffer? asks S’bu Zikode

July 04, 2006 Edition 1

Many policies have been passed. Many people have voted. But what has been
done has been done for the rich. I am afraid the government, other
organisations and academics speak about the poor all the time but so few
want to speak to the poor.

It becomes clear that our job is just to vote and then watch the rich speak
about us as we get poorer.

We have seen that when the plantations of the rich are on fire there are
often helicopters with tons of water to extinguish the fires. But when our
shacks are on fire helicopters and ambulances are nowhere to be found.

When Mhlengi Khumalo, a one-year-old boy, died in a fire in Kennedy Road,
Clare Estate, last year, Durban Electricity was not on the scene.
Helicopters only come for us when we want to march. The state comes for us
when we try to say what we think. We must understand this lesson very well.
We are on our own. We have no choice but to fight.

I become ever more afraid when I see that so much money is being spent at
high levels – on conference centres, hotels, stadiums – and that so little
is being spent at the grassroots level where most of our people live and
suffer.

Communities have had enough death. It is clear that Aids breeds poverty and
poverty breeds Aids. Both must be fought if we are not to be afraid in the
future. This is not about making small changes to policies. This is a class
struggle. This is a struggle between the “haves” and “don’t haves”. Our
society can only be saved if the don’t haves win this struggle.

Brave

More and more thousands of us are becoming brave enough to fight this
struggle now. For the first time in this country’s history the poorest of
the poor are saying: “This is who we are. This is how we live. This is what
we think. This is how we want things to be done . . .”

The Abahlali baseMjondolo movement is a home for those who know that the
poor suffer, know that this country is rich, and know exactly what made and
makes this country rich. Our movement seeks to bring policies that affect
our people under the control of our people.

Poverty and neglect by the state have thrown us together in our shack
settlements and from that togetherness we have become strong. The politics
of the strong poor is anti-party politics. Our politics is not to put
someone in an office. Our politics is to put our people above that office.
Our politics is also not a politics of a few people who have learned some
fancy political words and now expect everyone to follow them.

We believe that housing policies not only require housing specialists, rich
consultants and government. Housing policies require, most importantly,
input from the people who need the houses. But we also know, as poor
communities and as shack dwellers, that the broader poor have no choice but
to play a role in shaping and re-shaping this country into an
anti-capitalist system.

This is the task that the betrayal of our struggle and the struggles of our
ancestors has given to us. Although we will fight for land and housing in
the city we know that this is not only a fight for land and housing in the
city.

Benefits

Giving reasonable budgets for development projects in district
municipalities and rural areas will mean that people will no longer be
forced to leave their homes and build shacks everywhere. If the
shackdwellers belong to this country then they are entitled to all the
benefits of the soil.

The alternative, the direction of our struggle, will come out of the
thinking in our communities around many questions: What have we
shackdwellers learned from our struggle so far? What can be learned from the
South Durban community struggles against the Engen refinery; from the flat
residents living in Bayview, Albert Park, Sydenham Heights and Phoenix?

Why are councillors “imposed” on us? What should we do about it? What have
we learned from the deaths of shackdwellers like Monica Ngcobo, Tebogo
Mkhonza, Komi Zulu and Mhlengi Khumalo? Why are our people being killed by
the police, by fire, by councillors? Why does no one high up seem to care?

I am optimistic that the “will” of the poor will soon be done because the
poor are the majority of this country and the majority is beginning to speak
for itself.

# S’bu Zikode is President of the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement. This is an
extract from a paper he presented as part of the Harold Wolpe Memorial
Lecture series.