Friday, 27 March 2015
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

ISiyanda branch celebrates Electricity Installation, its Sixth Anniversary & Re-launches its Branch

It is with great pleasure that impoverished people on our own can achieve what was thought to be impossible sometime ago. It is with great pleasure that Abahlali can organise to build our power from below to use the state to develop and transform the lives of the impoverished without seeking permission from politicians or giving up our autonomy to the ruling party.

The neglected community of Siyanda VN Naik, just like many other Abahlali communities, has been denied the right to land and housing. We have been denied the right to essential services such as water and sanitation and electricity. When we started our movement in 2005 these services were denied to all shack dwellers in Durban. The government claimed to provide water but there would be a few taps for settlement of thousands of people. They claimed to provide sanitation but this only existed on paper. They openly refused to provide us with electricity claiming that our settlements, even when they were more than 30 years old, were ‘temporary’. Continue reading →