The Steep Price Of Being Family To Abahlali’s Most Famous Activist

The Steep Price Of Being Family To Abahlali’s Most Famous Activist

Lizeka MadunaBy Lizeka Maduna 

S’bu Zikode, the founding president of the radical shack dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo has had to be in hiding numerous times after threats were made against him for his fight for landless peoples and shack dwellers. His wife Sindi Mkhize spoke to the Daily Vox about the constant need for her husband to leave his family and go to a place of safety. Mkhize says her husband has been in grave danger for months now.

It all began in 2009 when people came looking for him in our home at Kennedy Road, but he wasn’t around at that time. I was victimised with my kids but we managed to escape, which I believe if we hadn’t we could have died. They were so brutal but fortunately my kids were still very young at the time, they couldn’t understand anything. Continue reading →

No justice for assassinated Abahlali activists

GroundUp

12 September 2018   By Christopher Clark and Nomfundo Xolo

Investigating officer claimed no knowledge of S’fiso Ngcobo’s case, hung up the phone, and blocked our number

Photo of Phumzile Mkhize

Phumzile Mkhize says she has been kept in the dark about the investigation into her husband’s murder. All photos: Samantha Reinders

Just metres from 28-year-old Phumzile Mkhize’s shack, perched on a steep hillside in the Durban informal settlement of eKukhanyeni, two bullet holes mark the wall of a local spaza shop where her late husband S’fiso Ngcobo was shot dead while buying cool drinks on 23 May. Continue reading →

Ubhacile umholi waBahlali baseMjondolo

Ubhacile umholi waBahlali baseMjondolo

 9 SEPTEMBER 2018, 4:45PM / KHETHA SANGWENI

USEKUBHACENI umengameli wenhlangano Abahlali baseMjondolo okuthiwa usephenduke inyamazane ehlala ibaleka ngenxa yokusongelwa Isithombe: Sibonelo Ngcobo

USEKUBHACENI umholi wenhlangano Abahlali baseMjondolo uMnuz Sbu Zikode okuthiwa uthola izinsongo ezishubile ezivela kubantu abathile, abasolwa ngokungahambisani nemibono yale nhlangano.

Encwadini ethunyelwe uNkk Sindi Mkhize-Zikode ozichaze ngokuthi uyinkosikazi kaZikode, kuvela ukuthi kwabona abasakwazi ukuxhumana naye. Continue reading →

My Family Needs Answers & Protection

My Family Needs Answers & Protection

For months my husband, S’bu Zikode, has been in grave danger after the threats made by Nelly Nyanisa, a senior member of the ruling party in the eThekwini Municipality, at an open meeting. Nyanisa said that my husband was making the city ‘ungovernable’ and threatened to ‘deal with’ the movement that he is elected to lead. It was also said that the movement, a democratic organisation with more than 50 000 members in Durban, and branches in five provinces, is a ‘third force’.

Leadership of a movement like Abahlali baseMjondolo carries a high price. In 2006 my husband was arrested and severely assaulted in the Sydenham police station while I had to wait outside on the road, in the dark. This arrest and assault came after senior politicians said that the movement was a ‘third force’.  Continue reading →

We will not be intimidated, says Abahlali leader

GroundUp

5 September 2018   By Christopher Clark and Nomfundo Xolo

Activists defy persistent threats in KZN

Photo of Abahlali meeting

Abahlali members sing at an August general meeting in Durban. All photos: Samantha Reinders

On a hazy Sunday morning in August, George Bonono, KwaZulu-Natal chairperson of Abahlali baseMjondolo shack dwellers’ movement, walks briskly through downtown Durban to attend the group’s monthly general meeting in a local community hall.  Continue reading →

No refuge for migrants in South Africa

New Frame

By Jan Bornman
Photography
Madelene Cronje
28 August 2018: Rajabu Mwinyi in his shop in the Durban CBD. Several xenophobic political parties are emerging in Durban, causing migrants around the city to live in fear.

 

Sitting behind security bars in his shop in McArthur Street in the Durban CBD, 36-year-old Hassan Bikorwa says he’s a sitting duck. Bikorwa, who came to South Africa from Burundi more than 13 years ago, says he has been repeatedly robbed. Continue reading →

We will not be intimidated, says Abahlali leader

GroundUp

5 September 2018 – By Christopher Clark and Nomfundo Xolo

Activists defy persistent threats in KZN

Photo of Abahlali meetingAbahlali members sing at an August general meeting in Durban. All photos: Samantha Reinders

On a hazy Sunday morning in August, George Bonono, KwaZulu-Natal chairperson of Abahlali baseMjondolo shack dwellers’ movement, walks briskly through downtown Durban to attend the group’s monthly general meeting in a local community hall.  Continue reading →

eThekwini’s shack plan sidelines Abahlali baseMjondolo

Daily News

Lee Rondganger

Durban – The eThekwini Municipality plans to enter into a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with four shack dwellers associations in an effort to improve the lives of residents in informal settlements and find long-term solutions for them.

However, the plan has been slammed by the biggest shack dwellers association in the city, Abahlali baseMjondolo who have been excluded from the MoA signing.

Abahlali baseMjondolo claims to represent 40 000 shack dwellers living in eThekwini alone and say they have 39 branches in the city.  Continue reading →

Billions spent on eradicating bucket toilets, to no avail

Simnikiwe Hlatshaneni
Over the past three years, the project has cost government an average of close to a billion rand a year, with no progress made.

 

Lack of access to land meant poor sanitation services, especially in informal settlements such as Good Hope in Germiston, according to a human rights advocacy group.

This was despite billions of rands being spent by government on a project aimed at replacing a quarter of a million mobile bucket toilets.

For the past 24 years, the Good Hope informal settlement has been home to about 4 000 people who have yet to have access to sanitation outside of the bucket system, said 39-year-old Nomnikelo Sigenu, resident and Abahlali Basemjondolo organiser. Abahlali is an organisation advocating for shack dwellers.

Continue reading →

Trump tweets about white farmers while indigenous peoples face annihilation

The Guardian

Raj Patel

Mon 27 Aug 2018 03.24 

Hundreds of indigenous Hondurans march in 2016 in demanding justice for the murder of indigenous environmentalist Berta Caceres.
 Hundreds of indigenous Hondurans march in 2016 in demanding justice for the murder of indigenous environmentalist Berta Caceres. Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

 

The first time Donald Trump tweeted about Africa, he agonised over white people. After watching Fox News’ coverage of the South African land debate last week, the President of the United States instructed his secretary of state to look into the “large scale killing of farmers”. Followers of Peter Dutton’s nine months tenure at Australia’s home affairs ministry will recognise the lie, peddled by the “alt-right”, that black South Africans are targeting white farmers. As the Guardian reported in June, farmer and farmworker murders are at a 20-year low.   Continue reading →