Monday, 27 July 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League Press statement

We continue the fight against Gender Based Violence

Thursday, 16 July 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Hamba Kahle Ernest Wamba-dia-Wambia

On Wednesday morning we received the news that Professor Ernest Wamba-dia-Wambia had passed away in Kinshasha. Baba Wamba was a good friend to our movement, he engaged the shack intellectuals with great care and respect and we always enjoyed our deep discussions with him. When we were facing repression, he would send us personal messages of support and care.

Baba Wamba understood that the oppressed have to organise themselves for their own liberation, and he understood that, as well as being open to the whole world, we also have powerful tools within our own culture and history to draw on in the struggle.  Continue reading →

Thursday, 9 July 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Unite Against Xenophobia

Since our movement was first formed fifteen years ago we have opposed all forms of repression. We have opposed capitalism, and its enclosure and commodification of land. We have opposed political gangsterism in party politics and the government which turns the state into a killing machine used by politicians to get rich. We have also taken an internationalist perspective and organised in solidarity with comrades in countries like Palestine, Haiti, Turkey and elsewhere.  Continue reading →

Friday 3 July 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Minister Sisulu is Playing Dirty Politics with our Lives & Dignity

If you are poor and black your life does not count to the government. Your dignity can be vandalised at any time. Your home can be destroyed at any time. You can be humiliated, robbed, assaulted and murdered by the police, the anti-land invasion units, private security or the army.

It is assumed that you are beneath the law, and that law enforcement and the state as a whole are above the law. Unless we go to court the law is not applied to us. We are evicted all the time in violation of the law but there are no consequences for the people who give the orders to attacks us, or the people who carry out those orders. We can be humiliated, robbed, assaulted, tortured and murdered with impunity. If we try to open a case against a police officer or government official at a police station we are most likely to be insulted and chased away. We might also be assaulted.  Continue reading →

27 June 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League Press Statement

The Lives of Women & Girls Are Not Respected

If you are poor your life counts for nothing to this society and this government. You can be abused and killed with impunity. Often it is the government that will come to vandalise your humanity.

Poverty, starvation and humiliation are terrible diseases for all impoverished people in on our so-called democracy. The situation is even worse for women and girls. We are subject to constant abuse by the government and men in our own communities. Our motherly is not respected.   Continue reading →

16 June 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement Youth League Press statement

Today We Mourn

Today the Abahlali baseMjondolo Youth are mourning all the comrades who lost their lives in the struggle against oppression.

We mourn the courageous young people who lost their lives in the 1976 uprising. The uprising that began on 16 June was not just about Afrikaans being imposed as the language of education. It was an uprising against a whole system of oppression. These brave young people were prepared to lose their lives to fight against the system that they had seen oppress their parents.  Continue reading →

15 June 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo

Building Food Sovereignty from Below

There was a serious problem of hunger in South Africa before the Covid-19 lockdown as a result of the long history of colonial dispossession, exploitation and abandonment, all of which continued under the rule of the ANC. There has also been a serious problem with the limited food support that is offered by the state being politicised by ward councillors and their committees. As everyone knows both problems rapidly became even worse during the Covid-19 lockdown.

We have developed a number of strategies to deal with the crisis of hunger. Where ever possible we work to build solidarity between progressive organisations of the impoverished and the working class so that we can build our collective power from below with the aim of combining our power to oppose the system of racial capitalism and build a different kind of society. One part of this vision is that the food system must be taken out of the control of capitalism and placed in the hands of the people. This requires radical land reform, urban and rural, support for small scale farming and the establishment of markets where food can be sold directly from the people to the people.  Continue reading →

9 June 2020

Violent evictions and demolitions of poor black shack-dwellers homes in South Africa are ongoing and must be stopped immediately!

As the world rises against the disproportionate brutalisation and murder of black people in the United States, it’s equally important that the world acknowledges and fights the brutal actions occurring at the hands of the South African government, police, and military. During the course of just two months, over 900 people’s shacks have been illegally demolished in the Durban area.

A new independently researched report from the Church Land Programme (http://www.churchland.org.za/) shows how shack-settlements in the city of eThekwini have been targeted in a sustained campaign of violent evictions and demolitions during the Covid-19 crisis. The local municipality, councillors, the police, the army, and private security companies, have driven this violence in defiance of basic decency and humanity, as well as the national law, international guidance, the Covid-19 lockdown regulations, ministerial proclamations, and the brave and concerted resistance of shack-dwellers themselves.  Continue reading →

Attachments

STOP Illegal evictions

Friday, 5 June 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

We offer our full support to the American rebellion

People dying from the coronavirus can’t breathe in their last hours. They die suffocating. It is a terrifying illness. In the United States black people are dying from this virus at a much higher rate than other people. This is due to the long history of racism.

George Floyd, who die at the hands of racist police in the United States, also died suffocating, saying that he couldn’t breathe. For more than four hundred years Africans have been dying from racism in the United States. Racism kills with everything from poor housing, too overwork, inadequate healthcare, stress, bullets and the knee of a police officer on a person’s neck.  Continue reading →

Wednesday, 3 June 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

The Politic of Blood Must be Stopped

If you are poor and black your life does not count to this society. It is often the state that will come to you with a gun. Your home can be destroyed, you can be assaulted, tortured and killed with impunity. This is the experience of impoverished people across South Africa. Our dignity is continuously vandalised by the state. Some people, like migrants and sex workers, are at even greater risk.

It has always been like this but during this lockdown the middle classes have suddenly started to take state violence against impoverished black people seriously. They have been shocked that at least twelve people were murdered by the police and the army in the first weeks of the lockdown. They have been shocked to learn that in South Africa the police kill more than three times the number of people that are killed by the police in the United States per capita. No impoverished person was shocked. This has always been our daily bread.  Continue reading →