Brutal and Illegal Evictions Continue to Undermine our Human Rights in New City, Marianridge

Wednesday, 21 March 2018
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Brutal and Illegal Evictions Continue to Undermine our Human Rights in New City, Marianridge

Abahlali in New City in Marianridge are under attack following the City’s continuous violation of a Durban High Court interdict. On Monday, 19 March, at about 17pm, the Isambulo security guards illegally and brutally evicted four families who are protected by the court order. This act angered residents who were then forced to resist. Three activists were seriously injured when the protest intensified during the whole day yesterday.  Continue reading →

ANC Continues to Encourage Tribalism

20 March 2018
Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA. Press Statement

ANC Continues to Encourage Tribalism

Our movement is built from the unity of families, neighbours and communities in struggle. If you live in a land occupation you are from that land occupation irrespective of what language you speak, or the province or country in which you were born.

However the ANC continues to try and weaken the power of impoverished people by attempting to divide us according to the provinces and countries where we were born. The ANC constantly encourages tribalism and xenophobia, especially at the local level. In Durban it is normal for Ward Councillors in the eThekwini Municipality to openly discriminate against people from the Eastern Cape. There are many examples of this.  Continue reading →

Land Occupations are Urban Land Reform from Below but Sale of Land is Criminal

Tuesday, 13 March 2018
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Land Occupations are Urban Land Reform from Below but Sale of Land is Criminal

Abahlali are pleased to announce that there has been remarkable progress in the eNkanini settlement in Cato Manor over the past two weeks. The MEC for Human Settlement and Public Works in KwaZulu-Natal Mr. Ravi Pillay has intervened in the brutal evictions and violation of a court interdict by eThekwini Land Invasion Unit. After several discussions with the Provincial government Abahlali has reached an agreement with the Province that violence cannot build our city, our province and our country. What has in fact been lacking is proper leadership on the side of the eThekwini Municipality. They believe in violence and disregard of the rule of law. As a result many activists have been injured, tortured, arrested and even killed despite the court interdict protecting 241 families that our movement has secured from the Durban High Court. Continue reading →

Urban land question is also urgent

by Richard Pithouse,

The opening pages of Frantz Fanon’s The Damned of the Earth offer a searing account of the city under settler colonialism. It is “a world divided into compartments”, “a world cut in two”, a world “of barbed wire entanglements”, “a narrow world strewn with violence”.

Fanon provided a clear and spatial measure for decolonisation. He argued that the ordering of the colonial world, its violent coincidence of race and space, must be examined to “reveal the lines of force it implies” so that we can “mark out the lines on which a decolonised society will be reorganised”. Continue reading →

Abahlali baseMjondolo are under attack in eKukhayeni

Thursday, 8 March 2018

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Abahlali baseMjondolo are under attack in eKukhayeni

Abahlali baseMjondolo are once again under attack in eKukhanyeni in Marianridge. Our members decided to go to the eThekwini Municipality’s department in numbers and demanded that they are provided with electricity. When they came back from that protest they found that their houses were being demolished by a private security company. When challenged a white man named Christopher who owns factories in the area claimed that the security company had been hired by the Land Bank.  Continue reading →

The real land expropriation movement in South Africa

by Mike Harman, LibCom

There has been a massive international reaction to the vote in South Africa to begin the process of land reform, but the ANC is not interested in real land redistribution and persecutes the shack dwellers who are carrying it out.

Let’s look at what the ANC actually says about land reform first. Bloomberg, no friend of poor black South Africans, reported that in a speech to lawmakers on Thursday, Cyril Ramaphosa said that the ANC’s proposal to expropriate land without paying for it will be done responsibly and farming must continue as normal, “There will be no smash and grab” of land.1

Continue reading →

Abahlali baseMjondolo to hold Solidarity Meeting in Durban

2 March 2018
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Abahlali baseMjondolo to hold Solidarity Meeting in Durban

Our movement will be hosting a solidarity meeting in Durban with comrades from other organisations from 9:30 am till 6:30 pm on Saturday. The organisations that will be part of this meeting include the Housing Assembly in Cape Town, Ubunye bamaHostela in Durban and Abahlali baseMjondolo branches in Gauteng.  Continue reading →

Good Hope Settlement in Germiston is Ready to Occupy if We Continue to be Ignored

28 February 2018

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Good Hope Settlement in Germiston is Ready to Occupy if We Continue to be Ignored

Our movement now has five branches on the East Rand in Gauteng. We will be launching a sixth branch soon.

The Good Hope Settlement in Germiston is now twenty-two years old. Some people have lived their whole lives in the settlement waiting for the promises of land and housing to be fulfilled.  Continue reading →

Abahlali to Launch a New Branch in Gauteng Province

9 February 2018

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement


Abahlali to Launch a New Branch in Gauteng Province

The movement of Abahlali baseMjondoli will launch another new branch in Gauteng tomorrow. The new branch is in Tembisa, in the community of Vusimuzi. The launch will begin at 10 am.

Despite serious repression the movement has grown immensely in the last few years, and continues to grow rapidly.

Continue reading →

South Africa’s Shack Dwellers See Politics Very Differently Than the Average Westerner

Vijay Prashad, AlterNet

Walking into the settlement at Kennedy Road in Durban, what one is confronted with is the familiarity of the place. I’ve been here before. Not to this settlement, but to others like it. To bastis in India and favelas in Brazil, to Mexico’s Neza-Chalco-Izta to Bangkok’s Klong Toey.

The United Nation’s agency that monitors housing – UN Habitat – has said that there are a billion people in informal settlements (slums). A demographer at the UN tells me that within a few decades, he assumes that the number might easily double. In fact, he says, given how bad the data is, two billion people might already live in these kinds of vulnerable settlements. ‘We just don’t have the numbers,’ he said.  Continue reading →