Abahlali to launch a new branch in Ekurhuleni

Press Statement: 13 October 2016

Abahlali to launch a new branch in Ekurhuleni

Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA is expanding to a new province: Gauteng. This Saturday Abahalali baseMjondolo will be launching a new branch in Good Hope, Ekurhuleni in the Gauteng Province. The launch will be held on 15th October 2016 at 10:00 in the Good Hope Community Hall.

Abahlali baseMjondolo has been successfully expanding a living politics into other provinces. The movement has recently launched two branches in the Western Cape. The movement is also set to launch branches in the Bizane municipality, Eastern Cape. New branches have also recently been launched in Kwazulu Natal: Gonowakhe, Umshwati Municipality and Bhambayi, Durban. Continue reading →

S’bu Zikode to Speak at Schools in Estcourt on Friday

14691091_1272611039435812_1098971015572243898_nWednesday, 12 October 2016

Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

S’bu Zikode to Speak at Schools in Estcourt on Friday

S’bu Zikode, the current president of Abahlali baseMjondolo has been invited to speak to the learners at the two schools that he attended: Inkosi Mjwayeli Primary School and Bonokuhle High School where he was matriculated. Both Bonokuhle and Inkosi Mjwayeli are situated in Estcourt in eMangweni, eMoyeni. Continue reading →

Abahlali baseMjondolo will hold the Unveiling Ceremony of the late Cde Thuli Ndlovu on 1 October

Thursday, 29 September 2016

Abahlali baseMjondolo will hold the Unveiling Ceremony of the late Cde Thuli Ndlovu on 1 October

14449012_1260069120690004_1902728699204971840_nToday marks exactly two years since the assassination of our comrade Thuli Ndlovu. Thuli was a member of the Abahlali National Council and the Chairperson of the KwaNdengezi Branch. She was assassinated on the 29 September 2014 at about 19:30pm. She was carrying her daughter Freedom. She was also with Siphesihle Madlala. Siphesihle, who is Thuli ‘s neighbour, was in the house to assist Thuli’s older daughter, Slindile, with home work. At that time she was doing her matric. The gunman fired eight shorts at Thuli and she died on the scene. Madlala was also shot in his stomach but he was rushed to hospital and survived the painful experience. Thuli left two kids Slindile and Freedom. She also left her Mom. As a result of a long struggle her killers, two ANC councillors, were brought to book. But the reality remains that her kids will never have a Mom again.

Continue reading →

The languages of xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa: Reviewing migrancy, foreignness, and solidarity

The languages of xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa: Reviewing migrancy, foreignness, and solidarity

by Camalita Naicker, Agenda: Feminist Magazine

This open forum piece argues that the language and discourse of xenophobia is a shared experience among people who are seen and constructed as being from ‘elsewhere’ in four different provinces in South Africa. It suggests that use of xenophobic discourse and language, the precarious nature of living conditions, labour conditions and restricted access to citizenship rights from the State, are experienced by all people who are categorised as ‘migrants’
internally, and those described as ‘foreigners’ or ‘refugees’ by Government officials.

What this open forum piece will also show is that the Pan-Africanism and collective ideas of freedom, struggle and resistance or ‘bonds of solidarity’ among migrant labourers, both from other countries as well as the former Bantustans during the struggles against apartheid, should not be confined to a nostalgic past, but seen as very much present in South Africa today. This solidarity is perhaps not so much about a shared history of struggle against colonialism and apartheid, although this too may be extant, but is rather informed by a shared present
where some are seen as citizens with freedom of movement and access to services from the State, while others are excluded. The notion of citizenship, then, becomes refracted, not merely through the making of the new categories of ‘foreigners’ through labour migration, but also through deeply raced and classed discourses which inform who is viewed as a migrant and who is not.

Attachments


The Languages of Xenophobia

Padkos: “They thought they had taken power. In reality they were taken by it.”

This week in South Africa, political parties compete for votes in nation-wide local government elections.

As we in South Africa experience another round of party politics, we offer, attached, some brief reflective comments from Padkos and also share, from a Latin American context, an interview with Alvaro Reyes.

The respondent, in the interview attached as your Padkos reading, is Alvaro Reyes, and he speaks from this contemporary Latin American context. In the short piece titled “They Thought They Had Taken Power. In Reality They Were Taken By It”, he adds some particularly useful insights to these questions and suggests that the kind of “disheartening

outcome[s]” alluded to above are also “due in no small part to an underestimation of the global political situation”. He also responds to the suggestion “that social change won’t be the outcome of government action, but of the mobilization and the fight of those ‘below and to the left’”. Reyes recalls that the concept of ‘below and to the left’ comes from the Zapatistas. He says: “I think that it is important to mention this because they coined this concept in order to point out that given the structural constraints placed on the contemporary state…, they have concluded that today, ‘above and to the left”’ can exist only as an oxymoron”.

Attachments


Interview with Alvaro Reyes
Reflective Comments

Women’s Power Meeting – 7 August 2016

05 August 2016

Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA Press Statement

Women’s Power Meeting – 7 August 2016DSCF1438

As part of the commemoration of the 60 year anniversary since the heroines marched to the Union Building against the Pass Laws and for gender and racial equality on the 9th August 1956 Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA will hold a Women’s Power Meeting at the Surat Hindu and Association Hall in Prince Edward Street in Durban on the 7th of August.

We will be honouring the Heroines who marched in 1956. We will also be honouring Thuli Ndlovu, Nqobile Nzuza, Thembi Zungu, Bongi and Fikile Nkosi who lost their lives still fighting for dignity and equality for women living in the shacks. Continue reading →