El Pais: ‘Dear Mandela’: retrato de la lucha por la dignidad en Sudáfrica

http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/02/18/planeta_futuro/1424275030_563723.html

Vanessa Ananya

Dear Mandela (2012) narra en una hora y media un pedazo de historia de uno de los movimientos de base más importantes de Sudáfrica: Abahlali baseMjondolo (‘habitantes de las chabolas’ en lengua zulú). Abahlali nació en 2005 en Durban (al este del país) con el objetivo de mejorar las condiciones de vida de las comunidades que viven en chabolas a través de la ocupación de terrenos vacíos para proporcionar un techo a los miembros de la comunidad, “exigiendo el valor social por encima del valor comercial de los terrenos urbanos” y de la resistencia a los desalojos que sufre la comunidad. Su razón de ser son los 20 millones de personas que viven en townships (zonas creadas durante el apartheid para la población negra y donde habitualmente no hay acceso a los servicios básicos) de los cuales tres millones y medio viven en asentamientos informales. Estos son constantemente demolidos y desalojados por el Gobierno de forma ilegal (de acuerdo con el artículo 26 de la Constitución), sin ofrecer una alternativa a las familias que se quedan sin techo. Todo un dejà vu. Continue reading →

Daily Sun: Councillor Bust for Thulisile’s Murder

http://www.dailysun.co.za/news/2015-03-03-councillor-bust-for-thulisiles-murder

By Thabisile Khomo Tuesday, March 3, 2015

IT’S been seven months since Thulisile Ndlovu (36), chairwoman of shack dwellers organisation Abahlali baseMjondolo, was shot dead at her house in Kwandengezi kasi, outside Pinetown.

But now the truth about her murder could come to light when the court hears evidence in the matter.

On Friday there were loud cheers and sighs of relief among concerned residents and organisation members when Mduduzi Ngcobo, a local councillor, was arrested and charged with Thulisile’s murder. Continue reading →

Claudia Jones: We Seek Full Equality for Women

We Seek Full Equality for Women (1949)

Taking up the struggle of the Suffragists, the Communists have set new tasks, new objectives in the fight for a new status for women. The special value of Foster’s contribution:

The leading role of the Communist Party in the struggle to emancipate women from male oppression is one of the proud contributions which our Party of Marxism-Leninism, the Communist Party, U.S.A., celebrates on its thirtieth anniversary.

Marxism-Leninism exposes the core of the woman question and shows that the position of women in society is not always and everywhere the same, but derives from woman’s relation to the mode of production. Continue reading →

Mexico: Challenges & Difficulties of Urban Territories in Resitance

by Raul Zibechi

Autonomy is the political form that communities in resistance have adopted in order to change the world. To illustrate these hypotheses I propose to reconstruct a small segment of the vast urban popular movement in Mexico since 1968, with the understanding that autonomy is a never-ending process: one of comings and goings that are visible not in declarations or programs, but in the traces left by daily life. The Comunidad Habitacional Acapatzingo is one of the most important urban autonomous experiences in Latin America, for the depth of its construction of community, for its duration, for its vocation of transforming the whole of society, and for its fierce resistance to state power at all levels. I will highlight some aspects that contribute to an understanding of this singular experience—how it came to be what it is, and the paths taken and not taken. In short, I will examine the exhausting uphill climb involved in any autonomous process that seeks to avoid subordination by existing institutions.

Attachments


Raul Zibechi on the politics of urban land struggles in Mexico

Statement for the Human Rights Commission Hearings Relating to Access to Housing, Local Government and Service Delivery

Yesterday Abahlali baseMjondolo presented to the Human Rights Commission in Johannesburg. This is the statement that was sent to the Commission in advance of the hearings.

12 February 2015

Abahlali baseMjondolo

Statement for the Human Rights Commission Hearings Relating to Access to Housing, Local Government and Service Delivery

We first met on the 5th of January 2015 to begin the process of developing a response to the questions asked by the Human Rights Commission and we concluded the process on the 12th of February 2015.

We note that we have been invited to the hearings as a civil society organisation. We would like to begin by stating that we do not identify ourselves as a civil society organisation. Mostly when people talk about civil society what they mean is NGOs. Most NGOs have no members and no mandate to represent anyone. When NGOs are taken to represent the people in the name of civil society this is one more way of excluding oppressed people from important spaces and discussions. Some NGOs are as hostile to democratic membership based peoples’ organisations as the worst elements in the state. We are also not a political party. We are a democratic membership based movement of shack dwellers and other poor people (umbutho wabantu). We currently have twenty two branches in good standing in KwaZulu-Natal, and one in Cape Town, and just over 11 000 individual members in good standing. The government, and some NGOS, have always been saying that our movement will not exist in a year’s time. They are always excitedly announcing the death of our movement. But this year we will be celebrating ten years of our existence. Continue reading →