SOLIDARITY WITH ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO: SRWP CONDEMNS THE ARREST OF 29 WOMEN AND DEMANDS THE IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION OF ALL EVICTIONS BY THE ETHEKWINI MUNICIPALITY

10 APRIL 2020
SRWP STATEMENT:

SOLIDARITY WITH ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO: SRWP CONDEMNS THE ARREST OF 29 WOMEN AND DEMANDS THE IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION OF ALL EVICTIONS BY THE ETHEKWINI MUNICIPALITY

On 9 April 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation announcing an extension of the National Lockdown by an extra two weeks. The lockdown requires all South Africans to stay at home. A few hours before this announcement was made twenty-nine women were arrested in the Azania occupation in Cato Manor for defending their right to have a home for themselves, and their families.

The twenty-nine women were told that they had been arrested for ‘contravening the lockdown’. Their ‘crime’ was sleeping on open ground after their homes were destroyed by a notoriously violent state hired private company, Calvin and Family Security. This land was first occupied in February 2019, and the occupiers have been subject to more than thirty armed evictions since then. On each occasion they have rebuilt their homes. However, after the most recent eviction they were prevented, at gunpoint, from rebuilding by Calvin and Family Security. As a result, they decided to continue their resistance by remaining on the land and sleeping out in the open.   Continue reading →

Twenty-Nine Brave Women Arrested, Two Settlements Attacked

Friday, 10 April 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Twenty-Nine Brave Women Arrested, Two Settlements Attacked

Yesterday the KwaMathambo settlement in Redhill and the Burnwood settlement in Clare Estate were both attacked by the eThekwini Municipality and subject to violent eviction.
As usual there were no court orders and the evictions were violent and illegal in terms of the both the ordinary law and the lockdown regulations that have placed a moratorium on all evictions. As has become routine since Calvin and Family Security were given the tender to evict a number of people were seriously injured.  Continue reading →

FIGHTING STATE VIOLENCE: SOLIDARITY WITH ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO & ALL PEOPLE’S STRUGGLES FOR HOUSING

9 April 2020
SRWP STATEMENT

FIGHTING STATE VIOLENCE: SOLIDARITY WITH ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO & ALL PEOPLE’S STRUGGLES FOR HOUSING

Despite the declaration that no evictions would take place during the National Lockdown by the South African government, working class people continue to be viciously displaced and evicted. Both before and during lockdown, those who challenge the state, landlords and thugs are brutalised, beaten and threatened.

Members of social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo have been particularly targeted, as seen by the repeated violent evictions, carried out without court orders, during the last weeks at Ekuphumeleleni and Azania settlements in KZN.  Continue reading →

A Set Back in Court: The struggle continues under difficult circumstances

Tuesday, 7 April 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

A Set Back in Court: The struggle continues under difficult circumstances

As we have detailed in a number of statements, and has been widely reported in the media, the Ekuphumeleleni and Azania settlements were subject to repeated violent evictions, all carried out without court orders, during last week. The evictions, which continued until Sunday, were carried out by the notorious Calvin and Family Security Services which repeatedly fired live ammunition at unarmed people resulting in a number of people suffering serious injuries. On one occasion Calvin and Family Security Services were accompanied by the army, who forced a journalist to leave the scene before an eviction was enforced. Residents were also forced, at gunpoint, to delete their video and photographic evidence of evictions and violent attacks on residents. Continue reading →

State violence against the poor is not the solution

Thapelo Mohapi, The Daily Maverick

It is vital that the government immediately begins to include the organisations of the poor and the working class in all Covid-19 planning and implementation. If they don’t do this, and continue to criminalise the poor, the result will be a huge breakdown in trust, and massive conflict.

An insert recently screened on SABC revealed an important reality about the Covid-19 outbreak. A journalist was interviewing residents of a shack settlement in Johannesburg about the pandemic. One of the men he spoke to said it was difficult to understand anything when your stomach is empty. He then asked the journalist for R20 to buy bread. The journalist, taken aback, replied that he was working. His interviewee, who usually makes his living selling scrap metal, replied that the journalist was very lucky to be working.  Continue reading →

NUMSA CONDEMNS THE ARMY FOR HARASSING AND ASSAULTING MEMBERS OF ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO

NUMSA CONDEMNS THE ARMY FOR HARASSING AND ASSAULTING MEMBERS OF ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO
5 April 2020

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) condemns the South African Defence Force (SANDF) for harassing and assaulting members of Abahlali baseMjondolo in Azania and Ekuphumeleleni settlement. Residents at the settlements had their homes destroyed when the eThekwini municipality demolished more structures on Thursday, this time with the help of the SANDF. These evictions are being done in spite of a clear directive given by the National government that evictions have been suspended during the Coronavirus Lockdown. Families’ are forced to sleep out in the open and they are totally exposed and if they try to rebuild their shacks they are harassed and assaulted by members of the SANDF. It is a matter of grave concern that the army is being misused to provide support for these unlawful and violent attacks. Such attacks will always be an outrage, but the outrage is compounded by the fact that they are taking place during the crisis resulting from the Coronavirus. It is clear that elements in the municipality are using the lockdown as cover to wage war on a movement that has won numerous victories in the struggle for urban land and has outplayed the municipality in the streets and in the courts.  Continue reading →

We Need a Democratic Response to the Crisis

Friday, 3 April 2020

Abahlali baseMjondolo Youth League Statement

We Need a Democratic Response to the Crisis

As the Youth league of Abahlali baseMjondolo we are seriously concerned about the global crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. We are really worried about what will happen now that this virus is in the shack settlements of the world where people live very close together, and often have no access to water, sanitation and refrigeration in their homes, and people often have no savings and do not get paid if they do not work. Continue reading →

Statement sent to the Covid-19 National Command Council, President Cyril Ramaphosa and others

The following statement has been sent to all members of the Covid-19 National Command Council and representatives of Local, Provincial and National Government including President Cyril Ramaphosa from the Pan Africanism Today Secretariat. It has been endorsed by Peoples’ Organisations and Movements around the world.

3 April 2020

Following the announcement of the 21 day lockdown (27 March – 16 April) in South Africa, a clear order was given by the Department of Justice and Correctional Services stating that all evictions would be suspended for this period. Social movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, alongside 27 social justice movements wrote to the government, securing this moratorium on evictions. However, on 27, 29, 31 March and 2 April 2020, the shack dwellers’ movement reported several illegal evictions undertaken by a private security firm on behalf of the eThekwini Municipality. These agents of the state used live ammunition in the presence of children and the elderly, destroyed people’s homes, broke building materials and burned them with petrol. Several people were seriously injured and hospitalized. Continue reading →

Solidarity with shack dwellers in South Africa (statement from Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Vijay Prashad and Yanis Varoufakis)

In response to the violent evictions of shack dwellers in the eThekwini Municipality in South Africa on March 27, 29, 31and 2  April 2020, amid the COVID-19 lockdown, scholars and activists Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Vijay Prashad, and Yanis Varoufakis spoke out to condemn the evictions and stand in solidarity with the shack dwellers:

News comes to us that as the global pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 enters South Africa, the government has decided to intensify the process of mass evictions of shack-dwellers. The poorest of the poor in South Africa are being removed from their homes and thrown into the streets, shelterless and defenseless against the virus.

We stand with the shack-dwellers – and with the most important organization of shack-dwellers, namely Abahlali baseMjondolo – as they struggle against evictions and as they struggle to ensure that the dignity of all people is kept at the center of all policies, especially those that are now being developed to tackle the global pandemic.

Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Vijay Prashad and Yanis Varoufakis