Democracy Takes a Beating in Durban

Richard Pithouse, Sunday Tribune, 3 September 2006

Abahlali baseMjondolo is the shackdwellers’ movement that grew out of a protest organised from the Kennedy Road settlement in Clare Estate on Saturday 19 March 2005. The protest was organised after a piece of nearby land long promised for housing was suddenly sold off to a developer. On that day Alfred Mdletshe told Fred Kockott, the first journalist on the scene, that ‘We are tired of living and walking in shit. The council must allocate land for housing us. Instead they are giving it to property developers to make money’. The movement that grew out of this first protest quickly spread to nearby settlements, and then across Durban and on to Pinetown and Pietermaritzburg. Abahlali now have members in more than 30 settlements.