Category Archives: Glen Nayager

The Innocent in the Dock, the Guilty in their Offices

The Innocent in the Dock, the Guilty in their Offices

eThekwini kukhala abangcwele

On 29 January the Abahlali 14 will be back in the dock.

On 25 February the Kennedy 6 will be back in the dock.

On 28 February Philani Zungu will be back in the dock.

We will never see the City officials that ordered the illegal and criminal demolitions in the Arnett Drive Settlement last week in the dock.

We will never see the police officer who shot Mam Kikine 5 times in the back with rubber bullets at close range in the back in September last year in the dock.

We have asked what justice is this? Some have said that it is the justice of the rich. But justice is either for everyone or it is not justice.

We have compiled a list of 21 incidents that show very clearly that the police in eThekwini are neither on the side of the law or the poor. It is copied below and it is on our website.

Please also see:

  • Democracy Took a Beating in Foreman Road by Richard Pithouse, November, 2005
  • Democracy Takes Another Beating by Richard Pithouse, September, 2006
  • The Strong Poor and the Police by Philani Zungu, December, 2006
  • Make Crime History by S’bu Zikode, January, 2007
  • Police Brutality by System Cele, January, 2007
  • March on the Sydenham Police Station, Press Statement & Memorandum, April 2007
  • The March on Nayager by Fillipo Mondini, April, 2007
  • Nayager Falls, Abahlali Rises A short film by Sally Giles & Fazel Khan, April, 2007
  • Democracy in My Experience by Philani Zungu, August, 2007
  • Silencing the Right to Speak is Taking Away Citizenship by S’bu Zikode, September, 2007
  • Police Violence in Sydenham, 28 September 2007 A Testimony by Church Leaders, September, 2007
  • Christmas Message by Bishop Rubin Phillip, December 2007

    • For more information or comment please contact:

    Zodwa Nsibande: 0828302707
    Mnikelo Ndabankulu: 0735656241
    Mashumi Figlan: 0795843995
    S’bu Zikode: 0835470474

    Update: 29 January 2008 All charges against the Abahlali 14 were dropped in the Durban Magistrate’s Court today after the prosecutor told the Magistrate that “there is no possibility of a successful prosecution in this matter.” As the 50 or so Bahlali exited the court Mam Kikine, who was one of the 14, and who was shot 5 times in the back with rubber bullets at close range during the March on Mlaba in September last year, asked “Uphi uNayager nezinja zakhe?”

    Update: 27 March 2008 All charges against the Kennedy 6 were dropped today due to the inability of the police to present the prosecutor with any evidence. The men spent 23 days in prison (during which they suffered assault and political intimidation), 14 days on hunger strike and a year and 6 days with a trumped up murder charge hanging over their heads…

    The Police & Abahlali baseMjondolo

    A List of Key Incidents of Police Harassment Suffered by Abahlali baseMjondolo
    – compiled by Stephanie Lynch and Zodwa Nsibande
    (28 January 2008)

    Please note that this list of the main instances of police harassment suffered by Abahlali baseMjondolo does not include the day to day police harassment suffered by shack dwellers in general which is clearly most acute in the areas under the jurisdiction of the Sydenham Police station. Day to day harassment includes racial abuse, racialised stop and search practices, casual violence, ‘raids’ in which bribes are demanded on the pain of arrest, men are randomly forced to do press ups on the threat of assault and in which electronic goods without a purchase receipt are simply confiscated by the police on the grounds that they must be ‘stolen’. At times this generalised day to day abuse poses serious risk to the safety of shack dwellers. For instance an unarmed 17 year old boy visiting family at the Foreman Road settlement was shot in the knee on New Year’s Eve 2006 for urinating in public. However it should be noted that not all officers at the Sydenham Police station take part in this abusive behaviour and that some have sough to meet with Abahlali baseMjondolo to express their concerns. Indeed Abahlali has good relationships with certain officers, African and Indian, and settlement committees work with those officers against crime.

    Please also note that this list of key incidents of police harassment does not include the consistent failure of all eThekwini Police stations – with the exception, on one occasion, of the Pinetown SAPS – to refuse to act against the City’s private security and Land Invasions Unit when they illegally (i.e. without court orders) and, in fact, criminally, demolish homes and evict people. Furthermore this list does not include the rampant intimidation, violence, abuse and corruption that is typically associated with evictions that are usually overseen by the notorious Land Invasions Unit.

    Finally please also note that in areas outside of the jurisdiction of the Sydenham Police station there have been instances where the police have acted fairly towards shack dwellers and within the law. For instance in June 2006 officers in the Umlazi SAPS defied more senior officers to enter a Ward Councillor’s compound and make arrests after a political assassination. In December 2006 the SAPS in Pinetown threatened members of the City’s Land Invasion Unit Private Security with arrest while they were carrying out illegal evictions resulting in the halting of the eviction. In September 2007, also in Pinetown, the Metro Police rescued a journalist and an Abahlali member who had been kidnapped and subject to death threats by gangster landlord Ricky Govender. However while Abahlali welcomes each instance in which the police respond towards shack dwellers as if they are citizens deserving protection these instances of just police action should not be misunderstood to mean that the situation is acceptable in Pinetown. There have also been numerous instances there where the SAPS have refused to act against blatantly criminal actions by Ricky Govender and his associates including assault, dumping toxic waste on people’s door steps and threats of arson, bulldozing homes and contract killings etc.

    1.18 March 2005: Attempted Meeting With Ward Councillor Broken Up with Police Violence

    A small piece of land in Elf Road adjacent to the Kennedy Road settlement in Clare Estate was promised to Kennedy Road residents for housing by Ward Councillor Yakoob Baig in the 2000 local government elections. That promise was consistently repeated until 16 Februaray 2005 and is a matter of public record. On 18 March 2005 residents were shocked to see that a factory was being built on the land. They walked down to the site and asked the workers to cease construction until Baig came to the site to explain what was happening. Baig was duly phoned. He arrived with a large contingent of police officers from the Sydenham Station. He made no attempt to speak to the Kennedy Road residents but said to the police “These people are criminals. Arrest them.” In violation of the Gatherings Act, which does allow for spontaneous protest, no attempt was made to negotiate with residents. Also in violation of the Gatherings Act they were attacked by the police without a prior warning to disperse. People were racially abused, told that they ‘must go back where you come from’, threatened with having their shacks burnt, punched, beaten with batons, teargassed, shot at with rubber bullets and bitten by dogs. Many people suffered bruises, abrasions etc.

    2. 19 March 2005: Protest Broken Up With Police Violence

    On March 19 March 2005 Kennedy Road residents blockaded Umgeni Road without seeking the permission of the City for a protest. The Sydenham Police arrived with the Public Order Policing Unit. The Sunday Tribune reported that 750 protesters engaged in a 4 hour standoff with police officers in a protest to demand better housing. Protesters were beaten, bitten by dogs and tear gassed. Rubber bullets and stun grenades were also used. 14 people were arrested and charged with public violence. They were assaulted and subject to racist abuse in the Sydenham Police station. They were then moved to Westville prison where the 14, including 2 juveniles who by law should not have been detained in an adult prison, were held in Westville prison, together with the other 12, for 10 days before appearing before a magistrate and being able to apply for bail. All charges against the 14 were later dropped because the police failed to provide the prosecuter with any evidence that they had in fact been guilty of public violence.

    3. 20 March 2005: Protest Broken Up With Police Violence

    On 20 March 2005 around 2 000 Kennedy Road residents marched on the Sydenham Police station where the Kennedy Road 14, known in the community as the ’14 heroes’, where then being held and assaulted. The demand of the marchers was that the 14 heroes either be released or that everybody be arrested on the grounds that “if they are criminals then we are all criminals.” They were violently driven back by the Sydenham Police together with the Public Order Policing Unit under the command of Supt. Glen Nayager. A number of people were hurt. The police did attempt to arrest S’bu Zikode but he escaped. The settlement was then occupied by the Public Order Policing Unit in armoured vehicles in a military style operation.

    4. 13 May and 14 September 2005: Intimidation in the lead up to Marches on Councillor Yakoob Baig

    Newspaper reports estimated that around 3 000 – 4 000 people marched from the Kennedy Road and nearby settlements such as Foreman Road, Jadhu Place etc to demand the resignation of Councillor Yakoob Baig on 13 May 2005 and around 5 000 – 8 000 marched again with the same demand on 14 September 2005. This time permission had been sought for the protests from the City and there was no police violence during the marches. However there was severe police and intelligence intimidation in the lead up to both of the marches with the state going so far as to have the army occupy the Kennedy Road settlement the night before the first march and an heavy intimidatory police presence in the Kennedy Road settlement on the night before both of the marches. Individuals were also targeted for various forms of police intimidation.

    5.15 November 2005: March on Mayor Mlaba Illegally Banned and Marchers Attached and Journalists and Academics Intimidated

    Abahlali took a decision to boycott the March 2006 local government elections under the slogan ‘No Land! No House! No Vote!’. The boycott was to be announced via a march on Mayor Obed Mlaba organised from the Foreman Road settlement. Permission was duly sought for a march and all the requirements of the Gatherings Act were complied with in order to stage a legal march. Late in the afternoon on the day before the march a fax was received banning the march on superious grounds that ‘the mayor’s office labour will not be present to receive the memorandum’. This banning was entirely unlawful in terms of the Gatherings Act. Nevertheless around 3 000 people decided to march in defiance of the unlawful ban. As soon as they exited the settlement they were attacked by the Sydenham SAPS and the Public Order Policing Unit under the Command of Supt. Glen Nayager. There had been no violence or threats of violence or damage to property from protesters.

    Police used batons, rubber bullets and stun grenades and at least two officers fired shots from pistols. Some people were shot with rubber bullets at point blank range while cowering on the ground. There is photographic evidence of one officer chasing fleeing protesters with a drawn pistol. A number of people were seriously injured and required hospitalisation. In at least two of those instances the injuries had permanent consequences. System Cele lost her front teeth. 45 people were arrested. Some protestors responded to the police attack by throwing stones. This defensive action succeeded in slowing down the police attack but the police then blocked all exits from the settlement and continued to shoot at any one attempting to leave the settlement, or passing by one of the exits, with rubber bullets and stun grenades for some hours

    The initial moments of the police attack were captured on video and in photographs but the police quickly moved to confiscate all cameras. Cameras were confiscated, at times at gun point and always on the threat of arrest, from academics and journalists. One journalist was taken to the Sydenham Police station on the orders of Glen Nayager and unlawfully held without charge for a few hours. Another was threatened with violence by Nayager should he write about what he had seen. The Mercury laid a formal complain with the police. Attempts by Abahlali members to lay complaints with the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) for assault, theft of cameras etc failed. The ICD would not open a complaint without a police case number. The police, at various stations around Durban, simply refused to open cases against police officers.

    The police violence was widely covered by the local, national and international media (New York Times, The Economist, Al Jazeera etc).

    From this day all requests by Abahlali to march were unlawfully refused by City Manager Mike Sutcliffe until 27 February when a court order was secured interdicting Sutcliffe and the Police from interfering with Abahlali’s right to march.

    6. 10 November 2005: 19 Families Arrested After Protest at Ward Councillor’s Office
    (The Lusaka settlement was not affiliated to Abahlali at the time of the eviction but the people left homeless joined Abahlali immediately after the eviction)

    On 6 November 2005 the entire Lusaka Settlement in Reservoir Hills was illegally demolished by the eThekwini Municipality. Some families were forcibly removed to a relocation site outside of the city and 19 families were left homeless. Many of the people rendered homeless in the eviction decided to occupy the lawn outside Ward Councillor Jayraj Bachu’s office in protest. After 4 days they were arrested on the charge of trespass. The legal norm is that a first offence for trespass should result in release on a warning. However they were held in the Sydenham Police station for 3 days before Abahlali could create sufficient pressure for their release.

    7. 12 February 2006: Police Prevent Abahlali From Taking Up an Invitation to Appear on SABC Talk Show

    In the lead up to the 1 March 2006 local government elections Abahlali were invited in writing to bring 60 supporters and one delegate to appear on the SABC TV talk show Asikhulume. The show was scheduled to be filmed live in Cato Manor on 12 Feburary 2006 . Mayor Obed Mlaba was also invited to be a guest on the show. Abahlali arrived at the Cato Crest Hall on the appointed day in good time. SAPS officers were stationed at the doors. People wearing the black t-shirts of the ANC and the white t-shirts of the IFP and Nadeco were waved through. No one wearing the red shirts of Abahlali was allowed into the hall although there were many empty seats. When S’bu Zikode approached the police and politely showed them his written invitation and requested to be let in he was immediately assaulted by an Officer Ngcobo. At that point the Abahlali members began singing and dancing in a circle outside the hall. They were attacked and teargassed by the police. They show started and the Abahlali members managed to regroup and to begin banging on the glass doors at the back of the hall. At this point the production staff became concerned and S’bu Zikode and Philani Zungu were let in. Zikode was given the microphone from the floor. As he began to speak the power immediately cut out. The show was cancelled.

    8. November 2005: Taking Down Fences

    A fence was erected around the Elf Road land promised for housing for Kennedy Road residents. Around 2 000 Kennedy Road residents walked down at night and removed the fence poles from the ground and stacked them in neat piles on the property. Two days later Zoleka Mthombo was arrested on the charged of possesing stolen property on the grounds that a wooden fence pole was found near her shack. The charges against her were eventually dropped after numerous court appearances because the police could provide no evidence that she had stolen the fence pole.

    9. Banned then Unbanned March – February 27, 2006

    Abahlali followed all the steps necessary to stage a legal march on the Provincial M.E.C. for Housing, Mike Mabuyakulu, on 27 February 2006 (Two days before the local government elections). This was the first time that funding had been secured for an Abahlali march and was it was therefore the first time that the movement could mobilise across all its geographicaly dispered settlements and the first time that it could stage a march into the city. Once again the march was unlawfully banned by Sutcliffe.

    Early on the morning scheduled for the march 3 key Abahlali activists and one non-Abahlali member were arrested (presumably the non-member was arrested in error). One was arrested while asleep in his bed, one while waiting at a bus stop and two in their homes. The charge was ‘violating the Gatherings Act’. Nayager was personally involved in all the arrests together with a notoriously racist police reservist known as Rafiq. During the arrests Rafiq shouted to shack dwellers that ‘they did not belong here’ and ‘must go home’. He also said, as the Sydenham police often do, that the police would ‘clear the red shirts out of this area’. All four were assaulted in the Sydenham Police station.

    At the same time all the exits and entrances to all the large settlements were blockaded in a military style operation using armoured vehicles, helicopters and so on. However people from the smaller settlements were able to make their way into the City to wait for the march to begin. There were numerous assaults in the Kennedy Road, Foreman Road and Jadhu Place settlements as people tried to get through the militarised blockades in order to join the march. Rubber bullets and teargas were used. Abahlali estimates that around 20 000 had gathered to march in the various settlements around the city.

    S’bu Zikode was able to escape the Kennedy Road blockade and Mnikelo Ndabankulu was able to escape through the Foreman Road blockade. They briefed an advocate and that afternoon an order of the court was secured that interdicted the police and the Sutcliffe from interfering with the right of Abahlali to continue with their march. Unfortunately by that stage it was late afternoon and the paid for transport was no longer available and only about 2 000 or 3 000 people were able to actually get into town and continue with the march.

    All charges against the 4 people arrested early in the morning were later dropped due to the inability of the police to provide the prosecutor with any evidence.

    10. 2 March 2006: Murder in Umlazi
    (Abahlali doesn’t have a branch in E-Section Umlazi but worked closely with people there to arrange marches, secure legal support and communicate with the media etc.)

    In E-section, Umlazi, a group of long-standing ANC and SACP activists were unhappy with their councillor, Bhekisasa Xulu, and decided to put up an independent candidate, Zamani Mthethwa, to oppose Xulu. Supporters of the Mthethwa campaign claimed that there was widespread intimidation in the lead up to the 1 March local government election including death threats, assaults and whippings. They also alleged that there had been blatant fraud during the election.

    On the day after the election they staged a small protest against the alleged electoral fraud. The Public Order Policing Unit shot dead a young woman, Monica Ngcobo, near the protest and shot and seriously wounded S’busiso Mthethwa in his home. The police claimed that Ngcobo had been shot in the stomach with a rubber bullet while throwing stones. The media reported this uncritically although her family insisted that she had been shot in the back while on her to her job as a waitress on the waterfront. The autopsy later showed that she had been shot in the back with live ammunition.

    An organisation called Women of Umlazi (which had some roots in the great women’s mobilisation in Cato Manor in the 1950s) was formed with help from Abahlali in response to the shootings. Woman of Umlazi organised a large march on 31 March in protest at these police shootings. Two former SACP activists who had worked closely with the Mthethwa campaign and the organisers of the march, Komi Zulu and Sinethembe Myeni, were later assassinated in separate carefully planned attacks. Others survived assassination attempts. Women of Umlazi responded by organising weekly mass meetings attended by hundreds of residents to which the Umlazi SAPS were invited. On 1 June, the Umlazi SAPS entered Councillor Xulu’s fortified compound, which had been protected by more senior police officers, and arrested two of Xulu’s employees for the murder of Komi Zulu. Thousands of residents of E-Section then organised to ensure that there was a fair trail and to push for the arrest and prosecution for Xulu. However the charges against the accused were not proven. Many residents felt that the trial had been perverted by political pressure from above. After the verdict a number of people who had been campaigning for a fair trial were subject to death threats and had to flee the area. No one has ever been arrested for the police murder of Monica Ngcobo or the murder of Sinethembe Myeni.

    11. September 12, 2006: Arrest and Torture of S’bu Zikode and Philani Zungu and Shooting of Nondomiso Mke

    Abahlali received no invitation to meet with Mike Mabuyakulu after the 27 February march on his offices. However immediately after announcing at a press conference that Abahlali intended to use the Promotion of Access to Information Act to compel the eThekwini Municipality to disclose its plans for shack dwellers to shack dwellers the movement received a sudden invitation to attend a meeting with the office of the provincial MEC for housing on 6 September 2006. At that meeting Mxolisi Nkosi represented the Department. He threatened Abahlali members and demanded that they immediately cease speaking to the media. Abahlali promptly announced their refusal to complay with this order on radio. S’bu Zikode and Philani Zungu were then invited to debate the Housing Department on this and other matters on iGagasi FM on 12 September 2006. On their way to the radio station the vehicle in which Zikode, Zungu and Mnikelo Ndabankulu were travelling was stopped by the police and they were ordered out. When Zungu asked why he was being searched, an Indian police officer from the Sydenahm Police Station replied, “because the black man is always suspect.” They then attempted to arrest Zungu for “having a big mouth” and pushed Zikode into the car as well. Ndabankulu was not arrested. However his Abahlali t-shirt was removed from him and the police said that they were taking it to use as a mop in the station.

    At the station Supt. Glen Nayager personally pushed both men into his office. They were handcuffed at the feet and ankles and severly assaulted with kicks and punches and by having their heads bashed against the walls and floor. Nayager had one of his officers video tape the assault. During the assault Nayager told both men that ‘this is what happens when you get cheeky and talk to the media’. The assault only stopped after Zungu, bleeding from the neck and head, lost consciousness. When he regained consciousness he was refused water and medical assistance. Both men were then charged with ‘assaulting a police officer’. The charges were later dropped after two court appearances due to an inability on the part of the police to supply the prosecutor with any evidence. Zungu has suffered permanent damage to his left ear.

    The first three Abahlali members to arrive at the police station soon after the arrest were searched, threatened with assault and arrest and forced out of the police station. Other people who arrived a few minutes later were chased away at gun point including Zikode’s wife and Zungu’s elderly and frail mother. Racist insults were directed at Zungu’s mother who was told ‘Hamba inja!’ when she asked to see her son.

    About 30 minutes later Kennedy Road residents decided to march on the Sydenham Police station after an emergency mass meeting in the hall. Although the Gatherings Act does allow for spontaneous protests the marchers were attacked without warning just outside the settlement with rubber bullets, stun grenades and live ammunition. The police chased people back into the settlement beating them and shooting at them in and around the hall and shacks.

    When things began to calm down Nondomiso Mke asked if she could come out to retrieve a dropped cell phone. The police said yes. As she stepped into the searchlight she was shot in the knee with live ammunition. She is a domestic worker and the permanent damage to her knee has made her work very difficult.

    With the support of Amnesty International Zikode, Zungu and Mke are suing the police. Amnesty has also encouraged the Independent Complaints Directorate to investigate this and other matters relating to Nayager and the Sydenham Police (some of which are mentioned here). That investigation is ongoing.

    12. 4 December, 2006: Siyanda Road Blockade
    (The Siyanda settlement is not affiliated to Abahlali but the Abahlali members were present at the road blockade and later secured legal support for the arrested people.)

    500 people from the Siyanda settlement blockaded the Inanda road in Newlands, protesting the construction of a new road that would destroy their homes and dislocate them. Five people were arrested when police attempted to break up the protest, and all were seriously injured. The police chased people off the road and into their homes and some were shot with rubber bullets at close range in their homes. There are many photos documenting the injuries consequent to the police violence. None of the injured people received any medical help from the police at any time. One man later died from his wounds and a woman miscarried. The charges were eventually dropped due to an inability on the part of the police to provide the prosecutor with any evidence.

    13. March 21, 2007: Human Rights Day Arrests

    On 15 February 2007 Kennedy Road resident Thina Khanyile was attacked, stabbed 18 times and robbed of his shoes and watch at the Umgeni Road bus stop while on a training run for the Comrades Marathon. On 18 February a well known and widely feared criminal living in the settlement brough a man to Khanyile and asked if he was the attacker. Khanyile identified Mzwake Sithole from Ntuzuma as his attacker. The police were called. While waiting for the police, a few Kennedy Road residents began assaulting Sithole, but were soon pulled away by other residents. When the police arrived, they began to assault Sithole as they shoved him into the police van. Khanyile went to the station and filed charges of theft and attempted murder against Sithole. A week later he was informed that Sithole had died in police custody.

    At 3 a.m. on 21 March 2007 police arrested 9 people, 8 members of the Kennedy Road Development Committee and Khanyile. Four of the arrested were women who were later released after a women’s protest that took the form of sitting in the police station all day with the children of the arrested women, as well as the children from the creche run by one of the women, demanding that the police care for the children. A 6th person, also a member of the Committee, was then arrested. The Kennedy 6 were charged with murder and held in Westville Prison for one month without bail. They only received bail after a highly publicised 12 day hunger strike and strong support from church leaders. Initially their bail conditions required them to go to rural areas and to keep away from Kennedy Road but after the support of a pro bono advocate was secured this was overturned and they were able to return home. They are due to go to trial on 25 February 2008. It is widely believe that the criminal who brought Sithole to Khanyile has given false testimony against the Kennedy 6 in exchange for not being prosecuted for various serious crimes. A similar strategy was used against the Landless Peoples’ Movement in Johannesburg in 2003.

    14. 10 April, 2007: March on Nayager Banned

    During the hunger strike by the Kennedy 6 Abahlali followed all the correct procedures to stage a mass march on Glen Nayager and the Sydenham Police station on 10 April 2007. A few hours before the march Nayager phoned S’bu Zikode to tell him that City Manager Mike Sutcliffe had banned the march, because, according to Sutcliffe, Zikode hadn’t attended the planning meeting with the city to discuss the proposed march. In fact this was crass trickery. Zikode had attended a planning meeting with senior police officers but they simply set up a second meeting and claimed that that was the ‘real one’. Zikode informed Nayager that the march would go ahead despite the ban. Nayager came to the settlement to physically enforce the ban. However Philani Zungu had a copy of the Gatherings Act and was able to show Nayager that a march of less than 14 people would not require Nayager or Sutcliffe’s permission. After tense negotiations and a vigorous protest in the settlement Nayager agreed and 14 people marched on the police station with candles. They knelt before Nayager as Zikode read the memorandum.

    15. 8 August, 2007: Ricky Govender Escalates Harassment in Motala Heights

    Gangster landlord Ricky Govender had threatened to have James Pillay’s house bulldozed. On 8 August he sent his bulldozers to knock down banana trees around Uncle James’ house. The destruction from the bulldozers included a water line bursting, washing lines being torn down, and toilet pits being filled in and destroyed. Shamita Naidoo, another Abahlali member and Motala Heights resident, came over to Uncle Jame’s house to take photographs of the destruction. Ricky Govender and his brothers started to pull and shove Naidoo off the property. They told her that they would pay R50 to have her killed. The Pinetown SAPS were called, but never responded to the incident. Shamita Naidoo and James Pillay reported Govender for harassment the next day at the Pinetown Station. They were told by Officer Naidoo, the officer who took the case, to call back in an hour for the case number. They called an hour later and were told that the investigating officer could not have the case filed because no one was assaulted, and it was therefore not a real case.

    16. 9 August 2007: Women’s Day Arrests in Pemary Ridge

    Officers from the Sydenham Police station knocked on the door of the then Deputy President of Abahlali, Philani Zungu, in the Pemary Ridge Settlement on 9 August 2007. When he opened the door they immediately began to search him. When Zungu asked why he was being searched he was promptly arrested him for “obstructing police in the course of their duties and resisting arrest”. The police van drove around wildly for almost two hours with Zungu in the back before taking him to the station.

    By the time the police arrived at the Sydenham Police Station with Zungu around 50 women Abahlali members from the Pemary Ridge settlement had started a protest outside the station. Emergency protests are allowed under the Gatherings Act. However Supt. Glen Nayager ordered his officers to disperse the crowd which they did using tear gas and baton charges. While being chased, Thabiso Makamba fainted. Her sister Andisiwe Makamba stopped to try and give her some water and was severely beaten by the police officers. Both sisters were then arrested on the charge of ‘public violence’.

    Harvard Philosopher Nigel Gibson was interviewing S’bu Zikode at the Kennedy Road settlement when news of the arrest of Zungu came through via sms. He went to the Sydenham Police station with Zikode where an NIA agent deleted his audio recording of the interview.

    All charges against Zungu and the Makamba sisters on Philani and the sisters were dropped after the police failed to provide any evidence in support of the charges to the prosecutor.

    A few days before the arrest Zungu had submitted a letter to the Land Invasions Unit and the Housing Department demanding that new shacks be allowed to be built in the settlement to accommodate people who have lived there as children and now had families of their own as well as people illegally evicted from the nearby Juba Place settlement. The new shacks were built after negotiations with an offical from the Housing Department but other officials did not accept this agreement. It is believed that Zungu was arrested because of the struggle to be allowed to build more shacks in Pemary Ridge.

    17. 31 August 2007: SAPS Claimed to be in Support Ricky Govender’s Threats to the Media

    Richard Pithouse, an Abahlali member, and two reporters from the Mercury newspaper went to Uncle James’ house to talk to him and investigate Govender’s recently issued notices to 20 different household to leave their homes by 31 August or have them bulldozed. Govender and some of his relatives accosted the journalists, threatened “to have them killed” and would not allow them to leave the property. Govender phoned the Pinetown SAPS to have Pithouse and the Mercury photographer Steven Naidoo arrested for trespassing. At the same time, one of the reporters managed to leave the scene and phone the Durban Metropolitan Police who arrived just before the Pinetown SAPS. The Metro Police drew their guns and told Govender that there was no case of trespass and that if he didn’t let the two go then he would be arrested for kidnapping. They also forced him to return Naidoo’s camera on the threat of arrest on a charge of theft.

    18. 23 September 2007: SAPS Refuse to Respond to the Harassment of James Pillay (Uncle James)

    Uncle James was returning home from Sunday Mass with his family when he was approached by a man who said that Ricky Govender wanted to see him immediately. Uncle James went to Govender’s house and was questioned about how evacuating his property was going. Uncle James informed Govender that he had no intention of leaving his home as Govender did not have a court order requiring his eviction. Govender told him he needed to move off his property by September 30th or be removed by force. Uncle James replied that he would need a court order or it would be illegal. Govender said he would set him up by putting a bag of dagga in Uncle James’ yard and calling his friends in the Pinetown SAPS to arrest him. When Uncle James was returning to his house, Govender yelled at Uncle James, verbally abused him, his wife and his son and made threats of violence. Uncle James tried to report the incident to the Pinetown Police, but he was told that they cannot go against the authority of a landlord and therefore they could not open a case for any incident that occurred on Govender’s land.

    19. 28 September 2007: March on Mlaba

    Permission was granted for a legal march from the Kennedy Road settlement to the offices of Councillor Yakoob Baig. The purpose of the march was to devliver a memorandum to Mayor Obed Mlaba. Before the march Abahlali met with Supt. Glen Nayager met with Abahlali and he assured them that they had the police department’s support for the march.

    The march of around 3 000 people proceeded peacefully to Baig’s offices. But while the marchers were waiting for Mlaba’s representative to come and collect the memorandum they were attacked without warning or any warning to disperse being given. A line of clergy stood between the protesters and the police but they were forced out of the way with a water cannon followed by a baton attack. This was all captured on video. Although the Sydenham Police confiscated the camera on the spurious grounds that it ‘had been used in the commission of a crime’ and the footage was deleted before it was eventually returned an expert was able to recover the deleted footage from the hard drive.

    Numerous people, including clergy, suffered minor injuries and 6 people were seriously injured and required hospitalisation. Mam Kikine, an elderly woman, was shot five times in the back at close range with rubber bullets.

    Thirteen people were arrested on the charges of ‘Violating the Gatherings Act’ and ‘Public Violence’. When Mnikelo Ndabankulu arrived at the station to check on his comrades he was also arrested. They spent eight hours in the cells in the Sydenham Police station. There was no violence in the police station. Nayager explained that Fazel Khan had been arrested because he filmed the March on Nayager, that Richard Pithouse had been arrested because of his writings about the situation in Clare Estate and that Mnikelo Ndabankulu had been arrested because of a comment he had made about police brutality at the march. He warned Khan to stop filming, Pithouse to stop writing and Ndabankulu to stop talking. He also warned all the arrested people that Philani Zungu must drop the court case against Nayager for his arrest and torture by Nayager on 12 September 2006.

    The Abahlali 14 have appeared in court 4 times and will appear again on 29 January 2008.

    20. November 2007: Further Abuses on Motala Heights Residents

    On the 11th of November, a man parked his truck across Uncle James’ driveway right in front of his door thus blocking him and his guests into his house. The man was politely asked to move his car and began to verbally abuse all the guests. The Pinetown police were called, but Uncle James was told that the police could not do anything because the landlord, Ricky Govender, gave permission for the man to park there.

    On the 18th of November, Govender and his friends showed up on Uncle James’ property. They threw stones at Uncle James, his family and his friends and verbally abused them. They tried to barricade Uncle James’ driveway and again the Pinetown SAPS were called and Uncle James was told that there was nothing they could do.

    Later a Motala Heights resident, Reggie, was told that if he went to an Abahlali meeting or supported the struggle that he would be kicked out of his home. Shamita Naidoo and Uncle James have frequently been threatened with death by Govender and have been told by residents who frequent his bar that “Ricky wants you dead”.

    Many Motala Heights residents are also frequently subjected to threats by Govender saying that they must attend his temple. Shamita Naidoo, a key Abahlali activist in the area, has also received letters from Govender demanding that she not step on to any of the properties that he owns and rents to poor residents. In late November, it was discovered that Govender had demanded that the postman deliver mail from three lots of Motala residents to his house. He continues to dump toxic waste outside activists’ houses. The SAPS have never once agreed to open a case against Govender. It is believed that one of the senior officers in the Pinetown SAPS is the co-owner of Govender’s bar.

    21: 13 November, 2007: Philani Zungu’s Third Arrest

    On 13 November 2006 Philani Zungu was arrested and charged with ‘interfering with an electricy box’. He was released from custody on the same day, after much pressure from a pro bono laywer. He did not encounter any violence or suffer any injuries this time. He will appear in court again on 28 February 2008.

    March on Mlaba – Final Press Release (& Updates on Police Attack & Aftermath)


    This is what (state) democracy (really) looks like in South Africa….

    Update 14: January 2010 – There is now some video footage of the march (taken before the police attack) on YouTube here and here.

    Update 13: January 2009 – The Human Rights Watch 2009 World Report makes specific mention of the violent attack by the Sydenham Police on this peaceful Abahlali march in its Chapter on South Africa. The Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions also condemned the Sydenham Police for this attack, and other actions against Abahlali, and called for a commission of inquiry into the Sydenham police in a report on housing rights in Durban issued last year.

    Update 12: 29 January, 2008 – All charges against the Abahlali 14 were dropped in the Durban Magistrate's Court today after the prosecutor told the Magistrate that "there is no possibility of a successful prosecution in this matter." As the 50 or so Bahlali exited the court Mam Kikine, who was one of the 14, and who was shot 5 times in the back with rubber bullets at close range during the March on Mlaba in September last year, asked "Uphi uNayager nezinja zakhe?"

    Update 11: The case has been remanded till 28 January 2008. There is an article on the march (and its violent repression) in groundWork's December newsletter.

    Update 10 13/11/2007: The next court appearance for the Sydenham 14 will now be on 28 November 2007 in the regional court. Also, Mashumi Figlan's response to the police attack on the march has finally been loaded onto this site and the new issue of iBandla koweZindlu is all about the march and its repression.

    Update 9: Click here for the minutes of the meeting held with Church Leaders to discuss the violent police attack on the march, here for an article on the police attack and the debate about dangers to democracy in South Africa by Stephen Friedman, here for a follow up article by Na'eem Jeenah and here for the full exchange of letters between COHRE and City Manager Michael Sutcliffe.

    Update 8: Only 6 days after the criminal police attack on the Abahlali march police attacked a protest against the illegal eviction of 50 families who have been living in Sea Cow Lake for 8 years wounding still more people and arresting a further eleven. The municipality tried to justify their illegal evictions in the name of the Slums Act. The Sydenham 14 appeared in court on 2 October and the case was remanded for further police investigation. The next court date is 13 November.

    Update 7: Click here to see the first batch of pictures to have come through the net of water cannon damage and police confiscation and deletion, here to read Police Violence in Sydenham, 28 September, 2007: A Testimony by Church Leaders, here to read An Open Letter to Obed Mlaba & Mike Sutcliffe by the Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions (Geneva), here to read a report on these two statements in the Sunday Tribune, here for some newspaper pictures of the march and here for the article in the Weekly Gazette.

    Update 6 (Sunday, midnight): Click here to read S'bu Zikode's response to the attack on the march – Silencing the Right to Speak is Taking Away Citizenship and here and here for responses from Jacques Depelchin (DRC) and Anilliah Masaraure (Zimbabwe), here for a short solidarity statement from Peoples' House in Turkey and here for a solidarity statement from the people of Dikmen Valley, Ankara, Turkey.

    Update 5 (Sunday evening): Numerous people have suffered minor injuries and the list of people who have received or who are receiving hospital treatment includes 2 people from Kennedy Road, 2 people from Joe Slovo (Durban), 1 person from Isaka ('Maritzburg) and 1 person from eNkwalini. Ma Kikine, 53, of Joe Slovo has been shot 5 times in the back and once on the back of the left arm at close range with rubber bullets. She is obviously frail and was obviously in great pain but did not receive any medical attention while in custody.

    Update 4: Click here for the Memorandum that Mlaba didn't bother to come and collect, here for an article in the Independent on Saturday, here for an eyewitness account by Mark Butler, here for comment from Mnikelo Ndabankulu, here for comment from Brother Fillipo Mondini (here for a response by Jacques Depelchin), here for An open letter to Lindiwe Sisulu from 'Citizens Against Privatization' in New Zealand and here for an article in the Italian magazine Carta.

    Update 3 (21:00): All 14 comrades have been released after a lawyer and other forms of pressure enabled an emergency bail hearing. No one was assaulted while in custody. They are due in court on 2nd October. They have, ironically (but typically), been charged with two of the many crimes committed by the police today – violating the gatherings act and public violence.

    Update 2 (13:40): Mnikelo Ndabankulu has just been arrested. He went to visit the arrested comrades and was immediately arrested himself on arrival at the police station, bringing the number behind bars to 14. This type of action will make it very difficult for AbM to support those inside effectively. Lawyers have been informed that bail is being denied and that the 14 will have to appear in court on Monday to request bail.

    Update 1 (12:30): Once again an entirely peaceful protest has been broken up, without warning, by an unprovoked police attack. Once again a number of people have been injured. At least 13 people have been arrested on the command of Glen Nayager despite assurances (below) that they would be given the right to pray and march peacefully. They are currently languishing in jail while Nayager, and his bosses, mock the constitution. But the good news is that while the police were rioting in Sydenham an interdict was won in the Durban High Court preventing Ricky Govender from demolishing the home of Mr & Mrs. Pillay and from intimidating or assaulting them. (Click here to read reports on the interdict in the Mercury and the Post.)

    Mass March on Mlaba on Friday 28 September 2007: Final Press Release

    Across South Africa shack dwellers are rejecting forced removals and asserting their right to the city in a series of popular mass protests unparalleled in post-apartheid South Africa. There have been thousands of protests in the last few years. This week has seen mass action all over the country. On Tuesday 5 000 shack dwellers from the Joe Slovo settlement in Cape Town went to the High Court to register their intention to oppose Lindiwe Sisulu's planned forced removals. Members of Abahlali baseMjondolo were there in support. Yesterday in Johannesburg people from the Protea South, Kliptown, Thembelihle, and Thembisa settlements marched on Sisulu’s offices in Pretoria. Tomorrow thousands of shack dwellers will march on Mlaba in Durban.

    There is no conspiracy behind this national wave of mass protest. Most times there is no donor or NGO support. Most times we are on our own and have to stand up for ourselves because we are being treated as if we do not belong in this country. The explanation for what is happening to us is very simple. The ‘experts’ and the rich and the politicians speak about us and for us. They see no reason to speak to us. Therefore decisions are taken for us and not with us. The results of this are clear. We are being denied basic services in the cities. In many settlements thousands of people find themselves sharing one tap or one toilet. Some settlements must live through 3 or 4 fires in one year because electricity is no longer installed. We do not suffer like this because delivery takes time or because money is short. We suffer like this because it has been decided that our settlements must be eliminated and so services are being withheld. When ‘housing delivery’ comes it is not what we fought for and it is not what we were promised. When ‘delivery’ comes some are being made homeless and others are being forcibly removed to rural ghettos like Delft in Cape Town and Park Gate in Durban. The word for this is oppression. It is therefore clear that we have to rebel just to survive. As S'bu Zikode famously said “The Third Force is all the pain and the suffering that the poor are subjected to every second in our lives.” There is only one hidden cause of these protests – it is that the suffering of the poor is hidden to those who have decided that they are too high to need to speak to ordinary people.

    Tomorrow's march has the support of a large number of churches and will begin at 9:00 a.m. with a mass prayer meeting in the Kennedy Road Hall to be led by Bishop Purity Malinga from the Methodist Church. The march will then proceed up Kennedy Road and left into Clare Road and straight into Randles Road. It will stop at the corner of Randles Road and Sparks Roads where another mass prayer meeting will be held before the memorandum is read to Mayor Mlaba.

    Our comrades in the Combined Harare Resident's Association have issued a statement in support of the march.

    Mike Sutcliffe has given written permission for the march. Glen Nayager has met with Abahlali to assure us that his officers will act to support the right to march. We have elected and trained 1000 marshals. There has been intense mobilization all week and final mobilization meetings will take place this evening. These meetings will include an all night meeting in Kennedy Road, an all night meeting in Empangeni and a film screening and discussion in Foreman Road.

    It is rumoured that Mlaba will send Ward 25 Councillor Yakoob Baig to collect the memorandum. Yakoob Baig was buried on 14 September 2005. Thousands of people have participated in the discussions that have flowed into the development of our carefully worked out memorandum. We do not intend to give it to a ghost. We are finished with Baig, just as we are finished with Bachu and Dimba and all the rest of the councillors. They have never spoken for us and we took a decision, two years ago, to speak for ourselves.

    While Abahlali are marching through Clare Estate and Sydenham the policy making elites will be meeting with the business elites in the ICC for their 'Housing Summit'. While they plan how to make money in the name of the housing crisis we will be marching. On the Esplanade an urgent application will be heard in the High Court. It has been brought by Abahlali to interdict the notorious Ricky Govender from bulldozing the tin shack in which the Pillay family have lived for the last 16 years in Motala Heights. Last week we had a mass meeting in Motala Heights. The people unanimously asked us to march on Govender next. We have heard their cry.

    The press statement below has been updated with the new demands that have emerged in the discussions in each branch and affiliated settlement leading up to the march and with the new settlements where people have decided to join the march.

    Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

    Abahlali baseMjondolo to March on Obed Mlaba for Land & Housing in the City on 28 September 2007

    We will march on Mayor Obed Mlaba on Friday 28 September 2007. We will leave from the Kennedy Road settlement at 9:00 a.m. and will, once again, march to Cllr. Yakoob Baig’s offices at the corner of Sparks Road and Randles Road where Mayor Mlaba has been asked to meet us.

    The City gives us no choice but to march. If we just carry on with our ordinary lives our ordinary lives will continue to consist of being burnt in the fires, being raped when we try and find a place to go to the toilet in the night, having our homes demolished and either being left homeless or being forcibly removed to rural human dumping grounds like Park Gate far from where we work, school, shop and pray and far from the libraries and sports facilities that we use. The city flagrantly breaks the law when it carries out its illegal demolitions and evictions. When we try to speak we are beaten, arrested and slandered. The basic rights to free speech and association guaranteed to us in the law are just denied to us. Our requests for meetings for us to be able to discuss our future are not honoured. For instance on 28 June we received a fax from Cogi Pather, the Head of Housing, stating that “The Municipality is not keen to enter into a protracted debate with a large group of people.” We are treated as if we do not belong in this country. We are treated as if the law is not for us, as if the land is not for us, as if the electricity is not for us, as if the schools are not for us, as if the city is not for us. This is not democracy. This is not justice. The City gives us no choice but to march. We will march under the banner of ‘Land & Housing in the City!’

    Operation Vuselele & Our Demands

    We have elected a team of march organisers who have been setting up meetings in settlements everywhere. We have a large number of mass meetings scheduled in other settlements for next week at which support for this march will be discussed and so is likely that support for the march will continue to grow. Each settlement, group of people in each settlement or organisation that decides to support the march are discussing their list of demands. Next week representatives of all the settlements and organisations will meet and we will draw up a collective memorandum. But there is already strong support for the following demands to be made to Mayor Mlaba:

    • An immediate moratorium on all evictions, demolitions and forced removals
    • An immediate moratorium on the eviction and harassment of street traders
    • An immediate commitment to seriously explore the possibility of upgrading rather than relocating each settlement and to undertake this exploration in partnership with each settlement
    • An immediate moratorium on the selling of government owned land to private developers
    • A commitment to the expropriation of privately owned land (e.g. Moreland land) for collective, social housing
    • An immediate moratorium on the exclusion of the poor from schools and universities
    • An immediate commitment to breaking with the current undemocratic form of development and to accepting the right of people to co-determine their own future.
    • The immediate building and maintenance of sufficient numbers of toilets in all settlements (for our dignity, to keep us safe from disease and to keep women safe at night)
    • The immediate provision of electricity in all settlements (to stop the fires that have plagued us since the City stopped providing electricity to shack dwellers in 2001)
    • The immediate provision of adequate water in all settlements
    • The immediate provision of refuse removal in all settlements
    • The immediate provision of support for community run creches
    • The immediate recognition that all settlements will experience natural growth, especially as children grow up, and that this requires existing shacks to be expanded and new shacks to be built
    • An immediate explanation as to what happened to the R10 billion Phoenix East housing development promised by Obed Mlaba after we marched on him on 14 November 2005
    • An immediate explanation as to what happened to the piece of land adjacent to Loon Road promised to the Foreman Road settlement for housing by Obed Mlaba when he visited the settlement while campaigning for the 2000 local government elections.
    • An immediate investigation into the rampant corruption in the drawing up of housing lists
    • An immediate investigation into the activities of the notorious Pinetown gangster landlord Ricky Govender (including his violent intimidation, illegal evictions and alleged cut rate purchase of publicly owned municipal land with the aim of evicting shack dwellers and building high-cost housing for his private profit)
    • An immediate investigation into the activities of the notorious police officer Glen Nayager

    We also have demands to the provincial government:

    • The Slum Elimination Act is immoral and illegal. Our settlements are communities to be developed not slums to be 'eliminated'. This Act must be scrapped immediately.
    • There must be immediate action to prevent farm workers from being evicted and harassed.
    • There must be immediate action to prevent the enclosure of land for private game reserves.
    • There must be immediate action to prevent the eThekwini & Msunduzi Municipalities from continuing to carry out illegal evictions
    • We opposed the hosting of the 2010 World Cup on the grounds that we couldn't afford to be building stadiums when millions have no houses. But now that it is coming there must be an immediate commitment to declare that the World Cup will be an ‘100% Evictions Free World Cup’ all across the province. i.e. That there will not be any evictions of shack dwellers or street traders.

    We will also use the platform created by this march to publicly state our full support for the people of Joe Slovo, in Cape Town, who are heroically resisting forced removal to the human dumping ground of Delft, and for the people of Khutsong. Since 2004 shack dwellers across the country have been protesting against evictions, forced removals, failure to provide even the most basic services to settlements and the completely undemocratic form of development that ‘delivers’ us out of the cities. All of these struggles began in confined corners but now we are getting to know each other. We will stand together and fight together. We have no choice. Everywhere we are under attack.

    Support for the March

    So far people from the following settlements and organisations have confirmed that they will attend this march:

    Durban: Kennedy Road, Foreman Road, Jadhu Place, Puntan’s Hill, Burnwood Road, Banana City 1 & 2, Joe Slovo, Crossmore, Arnett Drive, Pemary Ridge, Shannon Drive, Kenville, eMgudule

    Pinetown: Motala Heights, New eMmaus, Mpola

    Pietermaritzburg: Ash Road, Eastwood, iSaka (Mkondeni), The White House

    Port Shepstone: eGamalakhe

    Rural Network: Babanango, Newcastle, Pongola, Utrecht, Richmond, Greytown, Melmoth, Empangeni & eNkwalini

    Landless Peoples’ Movement: Pongola, Eston

    Socialist Students’ Movement & other UKZN students: UKZN, Durban

    Various churches and clergy: Durban & Pietermaritzburg

    Comment on this March

    Mnikelo Ndabankulu 073 5656 241
    Shamita Naidoo 0764940965
    Lousia Motha 0781760088
    Philani Zungu 0729629312

    Comment on shack dwellers' struggles in Jo'burg & Cape Town

    For comment on shack dwellers' struggles in Jo'burg contact Maureen Mnisi from the Landless Peoples’ Movement on 082 337 4514. For comment on shack dwellers' struggles in Cape Town contact Mzwanele Zulu from the Joe Slovo Task Team on 076 3852369 or Ashraf Cassiem from the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign on 076 1861408.

    12 & 13 September 2006: S’bu Zikode & Philani Zungu arrested, bound and beaten by Nayager and released

    Update: Click here to see Niren Tolsi s article in the Mail & Guardian

    http://www.sundaytribune.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3440988

    Democracy Takes a Beating in Durban
    (Sunday Tribune, 17 September 2006)

    Abahlali baseMjondolo is the shackdwellers’ movement that grew out of a protest organised from the Kennedy Road settlement in Clare Estate on Saturday 19 March 2005. The protest was organised after a piece of nearby land long promised for housing was suddenly sold off to a developer. On that day Alfred Mdletshe told Fred Kockott, the first journalist on the scene, that ‘We are tired of living and walking in shit. The council must allocate land for housing us. Instead they are giving it to property developers to make money’. The movement that grew out of this first protest quickly spread to nearby settlements, and then across Durban and on to Pinetown and Pietermaritzburg. Abahlali now have members in more than 30 settlements.

    Their highly democratic mode of organising, the deeply humanistic statements of the elected President S’bu Zikode and their thoughtful use of legal marches, negotiations and other tactics has won them major attention from community media to Al Jazeera and the New York Times. Recently leading figures in society like Bishop Reuben Philip and poet Dennis Brutus have lent their credibility to Abahlali’s struggle for genuinely democratic governance, access to services and decent housing in the city. But the local state has responded with consistent repression, most of it patently illegal. This has included the illegal banning of marches and severe police violence. More than 100 Bahlali have been arrested since March last year but in every instance charges have later been dropped as there has been no evidence to go to take to trial. The power of arrest is being systematically misused as a form of political intimidation.

    On Monday 4 September Abahlali used the Promotion of Access to Information Act to demand that City Manager Sutcliffe tell them, in concrete detail, what the city’s plans are for them. The next day Mxolisi Nkosi, the HOD in the Dept of Housing, called Abahlali in to berate them and demand that they cease speaking to the media. Abahlali asserted their refusal to be silenced all over the media spectacularly out arguing Departmental Spokesperson Lennox Mabaso in two major radio debates. Nonhlanhla Mzobe, a key Abahlali activist, found that her boss had received a letter from the local councillor, Yakoob Baig, demanding that she be fired for supporting the ‘red shirts’. The following Monday Abahlali, together with community organisations from the Municipal flats in Wentworth and Chatsworth, protested outside the Housing Summit at the ICC wearing t-shirts demanding “Talk to Us, Not For Us.” Again this put them all over the newspapers, radio and TV.

    On Tuesday Abahlali were invited to be on Gagasi FM from 18:00 to 19:00. They had recently raised some money via a 16 team football tournament to help with the transport between the settlements. Some of this money was used to hire a small car, a Tazz, to help with all the getting round for radio interviews, meetings and so on in the hours after taxis have stopped running. At around 17:40 S’bu Zikode (President), Philani Zungu (Deputy President) and Mnikelo Ndabanakulu (PRO) got into the car to leave for the radio interview. While the car was still stationary, officers from the Sydenham police station, notorious in the settlements for its corruption, brutality and anti-African racism, pounced. They thrust guns into the faces of the Bahlali and accused them, in a highly racialised manner, of driving a stolen vehicle. The police ordered the three men out of the car. When they saw that Ndanankulu was wearing one of the famous red Abahlali T-shirts they pulled it off him, insulted him, pushed him around, threw the shirt into the mud, made a great show of standing and spitting on it and announced that ‘there will be no more red shirts here’.

    Philani Zungu politely but firmly told them that they had no right to act like this and suggested that this was racist political intolerance. He was assaulted. Zikode was also assaulted as the two were bundled into the van. The police picked up Ndabankulu’s red shirt and said they were taking it ‘to use as a mop in the station’.

    Ndabankulu, Zikode’s wife Sindi, Zungu’s mother, Ma Zungu, and a handful of others soon got to the nearby Sydenham police station. They were denied entrance, sworn at and racially abused. Someone sent an SMS to P4 radio explaining that their guests were under arrest. This was announced on air. Within minutes Bahlali started arriving from all over Durban and Pinetown. There was soon a crowd of around 40 people outside the station. Access to the prisoners and medical attention for Zungu was asked for, but denied. The police refused to say what the charge was.

    In the nearby Kennedy Road settlement an emergency mass meeting was being held in the hall. More than 500 people squeezed in and more waited outside. An SMS was sent to people at the police station to see if bail was possible. The police said that there would be no bail. When this was conveyed to the meeting a group of women in the front decided to march on the police station.

    Within minutes of people getting onto the road the police arrived. They gave no warnings to disperse and began shooting with rubber bullets and live ammunition. Anyone on the road or even moving between the shacks was shot at. A women in her 40s, known as Zinovia, was shot in both legs.

    Back at the police station there was a glimpse of Zikode and Zungu lying face down on the floor handcuffed and bound at the feet. Ndabankulu’s red shirt was lying on the floor next to them. In the Charge Office there was a whiteboard headed ‘Suspicious Behaviour’ that listed ‘3 Black Men Driving a Tazz’ at the top. It was announced that Zikode and Zungu were to be charged with assaulting a police officer.

    Word was received that the police were continuing to shoot in the settlement and that there had been some attempt at a fight back with stones and bricks. Zikode got access to his cell phone and sent out two messages “Please look after Sindi!” and “Nayager has satisfied himself with us. Too tough with Philani.” (Glen Nayagar is the notorious station commander with a record of racist violence towards Abahlali. He has also been accused of intimidating journalists who have witnessed police violence against Abahali.) Zikode was assured that Sindi was ok and asked if he wanted people to protest outside the police station, as they were determined to do, or to make a tactical retreat in the hope of calming the police down. He replied “Up to them!! I am fighting for them. Not for myself.”

    Suddenly a group of men in camouflage arrived all pumped up with adrenalin and a will to violence. They declared the collection of about 40 people an illegal gathering and began herding people off using their guns like cattle prods and threatening to shoot. One of the Sydenham policemen shouted, in Fanakalo, ‘Hamba inja! Hamba!’ Another, a notoriously racist and violent local police reservist told anyone who’d listen that ‘The Red Shirts must go back where they came from’.

    Kennedy Road was still occupied by the police. But around Clare Estate small groups of Bahlali were meeting in settlements or in safe places like the forecourt of the BP in Clare Road where community activists Des D’sa from the Wentworth and Orlean and Pinky Naidoo from Chatsworth arrived to offer solidarity to Ndabankulu, still shirtless, and three Bahlali looking for a late taxi to get back to Pinetown. A march of 20 000 on the Sydenham Police Station was suggested.

    The next morning there were hundreds of Bahlali in the Durban magistrates’ court. The Magistrate released Zikode and Zungu without asking for bail. They were joyously carried out of the court on the shoulders of their comrades. Both men had visible wounds and explained that they had been personally assaulted by Nayager who had hurled political abuse on them as he bashed their heads against the wall. A group of policemen had enthusiastically photographed Nayager’s assault which only ended when Zungu was knocked unconscious and could not be revived. After the celebration in the court gardens was over they went straight to the District Surgeon to have their injuries recorded with a view to laying charges against the police.

    Another red shirt will be sewn for Mnikelo Ndanankulu on a rented pedal power sewing machine. But the city’s democratic credentials are in tatters that will not be sewn together by more empty pomposity at the ICC or wasting billions of rand on another airport and stadium. This assault on two men trying to get to a radio interview was an assault on democracy. If the rulers of this city do not learn to accept that the poor have a right to disagree with the powerful then our future will be as ugly as the Sydenham Police station.

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    MEC s Office Instructs Shack Dwellers to Stop All Communication with the Media

    Thursday, 06 September 06:47 PM

    Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Release 6 September 2006

    On Thursday last week Abahlali baseMjondolo announced that we would use the Promotion of Access to Information Act to compel the eThekwini Municipality to disclose its plans for shack dwellers to shack dwellers. The next day we received a sudden invitation to attend a meeting with the office of the provincial MEC for housing at 3:00 pm today.

    We took time away from our work and made ourselves available for this meeting. We hoped that we would finally get answers to our basic questions about what future the government is planning for us when we are told that the slums will be cleared by 2010. We would like to register our profound disappointment and disgust at the way in which this meeting was conducted by Mxolisi Nkosi, the HOD in the Dept. He behaved like an Inkosi berating his subjects in front of his councillors. There was no democracy in the meeting. We were not allowed to speak and when we insisted that this was our right we were threatened. Mr. Jaguja, a respected member of his community, of Abahlali and the Methodist church was insulted by Lennox Mabaso and told to shut his mouth when he tried to speak. The purpose of this meeting was for us to be told to know our place. Nkosi said that he had been getting phone calls from the media and instructed us to stop speaking to the media. We will not be intimidated. We will keep speaking to the media.

    Nkosi then instructed us, making much use of complicated English words that we don t understand, that from now on the province would not be dealing with our matters. He insisted that Abahlali must go back to the Municipality and that the councillors are the route to communicate with the Municipality. We have tried this for years. The councillor system failed us and then the Mayor failed us. Recently Mike Sutcliffe told a researcher from England that his slum clearance programme would not meet its 2010 target because of a lack of funding from the provincial government. Now the provincial government tells us to back to the city!

    Nkosi is trying to make the councillors as Gods above the people. We will not accept this. As citizens of a democracy we have a right to stand together, make our selves strong and demand answers directly from government. We will not be sent back to the control of lying and corrupt councillors who take their orders from above and not from below. In some of our settlements our councillors have even tried to intimidate us with armed threats. We have no choice. We will now go back to the streets in our thousands. And we want to make it very clear that it is Nkosi and not some third force that will be making us march.

    On Monday and Tuesday we will be protesting because we have been denied access to the housing summit that is happening at the IEC in Durban. We are the ones who need houses but we are denied access to the conference. The rich will be there in numbers to speak the language of house prices and to demand that the poor are relocated to keep prices high. No one will be there to speak for the poor and for putting people before the profits of the rich.

    The government talks about Breaking New Ground and says that upgrades are better than relocation because they keep the people near the city where there is work, schools, healthcare and so on. The government s own policy states that relocations make the poor much poorer. But the city and the province want to push the poor out of the city. They are in the pockets of the rich. This is not the democracy that we and our ancestors fought for. There is no justice in this.

    We will keep struggling and we will keep talking to the media. Our ancestors were not silenced by Shepstone and McKenzie. Our parents were not silenced by Botha and Buthelezi. We were not silenced by De Klerk. We were not silenced by Sutcliffe when he tried to ban our marches. We will not be silenced by Nkosi. On the question of our right to speak to the media the struggles against apartheid have already won us a victory that we will defend. In this case the law is on our side. We will defend our right to speak.

    Democracy is not about us being loyal to Nkosi. Democracy is about Nkosi being loyal to the citizens of this province.

    For further information or comment please contact:

    S bu Zikode, President, 0835470474
    Philani Zungu, Deputy President, 0729629312
    M du Hlongwa, General Secretary, 0723358966
    Mnikelo Ndabankulu, PRO, 0735656241
    Nonhlanhla Mzobe, Kennedy Road Settlement 0760884352
    Colbert Jaguja, Juba Place Settlement 0732854270
    Lindela Figlan, Foreman Road Settlement, 0725274600
    Zodwa Nsibande, Kennedy Road Settlement, 0834925442
    Louisa Mota, Motala Heights Settlement, 0781760088

    MEMORANDUM HANDED TO SENIOR SUPERINTENDENT GLEN NAYAGER OF THE SYDENHAM POLICE STATION

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    MEMORANDUM HANDED TO SENIOR SUPERINTENDENT GLEN NAYAGER OF THE SYDENHAM POLICE STATION

    Tuesday 10 April 2007

    Glen Nayager you have vandalized our humanity. We are here to reclaim our police station. Neither you nor your powerful friends own this police station. This police station belongs to the people who live in this area. We live in shacks and we are wearing red shirts and demanding the right to continue live here in the city, to live in decent houses, to have access to electricity and water and toilets while we wait for these houses and for our children to be able to attend the schools here. But this does not mean that we are not people. None of this makes us criminals. We are part of the people to whom this police station belongs. You have broken the trust of a large part of the people for whom you are supposed to be working. You were supposed to be our servant, not our oppressor. Since you were entrusted with this police station the police in this area have treated all shack dwellers as criminals. And since we united as Abahlali baseMjondolo you have constantly harassed and attacked our movement. Your job is to protect all of the people in your area but you have decided to make the poor your enemy. You have made this police station famous across the whole city and sometimes the whole country and even in other countries for its racism, its violence, its cruelty, its criminality and its brutal oppression of an organisation that has only asked for what is right.

    The main complaints that have emerged against you, and the way that this police station has been run since you arrived here (remembering that shack dwellers worked well with the Sydenham Police before you came here) in our initial discussion over the Easter weekend are the following:

    1. RACISM: You, and many of your officers, are guilty of extreme, systematic and casual racism towards African people. You insult us in the most ugly language, language that is supposed to be part of the past. You order us around and insult us and even our mothers and father in isiFanakalo like it is 15 June 1976 and you are a baas sitting at his braai and we are all your garden boys and kitchen girls. When your officers do this ‘stop and search’ it is only Africans who are stopped and searched. If there is a line of young men waiting for the taxi your officers leave the coloured men and the Indian men and search only the Africans. Everyone knows this. Sometimes even the young coloured and Indian men become embarrassed. We joke and say ‘The black man is always a suspect’ but it is not funny. We and our parents and our ancestors did not struggle for this. What goes for one must go for all. Stop and search everyone or stop and search no one. We have built a non-racial movement and we are proud of this. Many poor Indians have joined us and we have welcomed them as brothers and sisters and they have welcomed us into their communities in the same way. But, although there are some officers, Indian and African, at your police station who are embarrassed by the racism that you have bought here you have turned what should be the peoples’ police station into the headquarters for racism in Wards 23 & 25.

    2. CRIMINALISATION OF THE POOR: You, and many of your officers, speak and act as though all poor people and especially shack dwellers, are criminals. You openly call us all ‘rogues’ and we have seen how you show us and our communities on your website. You and your officers come to us as though we are all criminals and not as though we are citizens deserving protection.

    3. YOU MAKE POVERTY A CRIME: We have very few toilets in our settlements. This is not our fault. We have marched for toilets and had our marches illegally banned and been illegally beaten and arrested by you and your officers on those marches. But still we have the situation where a thousand people share one toilet. For this reason we often have to urinate in the bushes. Yet your officers are always arrested and beating us for the urinating in public. On New Years’ Eve one boy who was visiting from the Transkei was even shot in the leg at Foreman Road for running away after he got a shock when your officers tried to arrest him for urinating in public. We agree that urinating in public is not good. In fact it is a big problem because it is often not safe for women to be alone in the bushes at night. But the cause of this problem is those people who refuse to give us toilets.

    4. NO RESPECT FOR OUR HOMES: You and your officers have no respect for the sanctity of our homes. You behave as though our shacks do not exist. You push your way inside anytime without knocking, you break the shacks and our things inside our shacks any time you feel like, you search our homes without a warrant turning everything upside down and you even arrest people for drinking ‘in public’ while we are sitting in our shacks. There have been cases when your officers have pushed their way into our shack churches. We know that you do not want our shacks to exist but they do exist. They are our homes and they must be treated with the dignity of any other home. From now on we will lay a charge of trespass against any of your officers that enter our homes without permission and we will lay a charge of wilful damage to property against any of your officers that damages our homes or the things that we have inside them.

    5. YOU PROTECT AND WORK WITH CRIMINALS: We have always said that there are poor criminals and that there are also rich criminals. You work with both kinds against the innocent. But we are especially concerned that you protect well known violent criminals in our communities, people who prey on rich and poor alike, and then use them as your informers. These are the people who, in exchange for your protection from arrest and prosecution, are prepared to give false statements against innocent people who work for the good of the community. You want to keep criminals out of prison so that you can put innocent people inside.

    6. YOU WORK WITH PEOPLE THAT HAVE DECLARED THEMSELVES THE ENEMIES OF SHACK DWELLERS AND OF OUR MOVEMENT: There are people who want all shack dwellers to be forced out of all the areas in Wards 23 and 25. You and some of your officers openly support these people. The police who are supposed to be protecting us tell us to ‘go back where you came from’. Sometimes we are even told that we are ‘bringing AIDS to this community’. Some of these people who don’t want shack dwellers in the city are very angry that shack dwellers have united across these two wards, across Durban and across other towns and made ourselves strong. There are people like the Ward Councillors and the City Manager and others who slander our movement and say that if we speak for ourselves we are ‘criminals’ or that we are being ‘used’ by other people or that we are ‘political’ and that therefore we have no right to speak and must be illegally and violently repressed. You have publicly aligned yourself with these people when as a police officer you should be neutral and treat every one equally before the law. You openly tell us, often while you are beating us, that ‘there will be no more red shirts here’. After your officers had beaten Mnikelo Ndabankulu and stolen his red shirt in September last year you boasted that that shirt was now the mop in your station. You are not even the spokesperson for your station – that is the job of Captain Lazarus and yet you always personally go to the media to lie about us. It is clear that you hate us and that you hate our movement. But as a police officer you are a servant of the public and we are part of that public. You should keep your hatred private and not put it at the centre of your work.

    7. YOU IGORE REAL CRIMES AGAINST SHACK DWELLERS BUT ACT AS THOUGH IT IS A CRIME FOR SHACK DWELLERS TO SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES: When a women in the shacks is beaten by her husband she will probably be ignored if she goes to your station for help. If she refuses to leave until she is helped and brings friends or comrades to stand with her in the station and demand help then you might send a van to the settlement but your officers won’t come into the settlement to arrest the abuser. They will just park outside and tell the victim to go and fetch the abuser which of course she cannot do. But if we have a small protest and are not hurting or threatening to hurt anyone 7 vans can be there in minutes and you’ll immediately start beating us and shooting at us with rubber bullets. Sometimes you’ll even shoot at us with your pistols. You ban our marches which is illegal. You attack us without warning when we are marching which is illegal. You beat us and even shoot at us when we are running away which is illegal. Your officers have even arrested people on charges of Attending an Illegal Gathering and Public Violence while they are sleeping in their beds or standing at the bus stop because you know that they plan to attend a march later. This too is illegal. You arrest us all the time, keep us in the cells and beat us, then make us go to court 5 or 6 times (while you and your offices fail to attend the case as it get delayed again and again) before the charges are eventually dropped when you never had any case against us in the first place. You misuse arrest as a form of punishment and intimidation. It is clear that you do not see shack dwellers as citizens of this country.

    8. YOU REFUSE TO ALLOW US TO OPEN CASES AGAINST YOU AND YOUR OFFICERS: Many, many times after we have been insulted, beaten, robbed and had our basic political rights stripped from us by you and your officers we have tried to open cases against the police. You just refuse to allow us to open the cases and hit us again. Your officers fear you too much to allow us to open cases against you. For instance after your officers shot Nondomiso Mke with live ammunition in September last year she was not allowed to open a case. Philani Zungu then went with her to insist that she be allowed to open the case even though he had been personally beaten unconscious by you on the same night as Nondomiso was shot by having his head bashed against the wall. Yet Nondomiso was still not allowed to open the case and now Philani is assaulted every time you find him on Burnwood Road. When S’bu Zikode went to open a case against you other officers feared you too much to open the case. The same happened to System Cele after officers acting on your command beat her so badly that her front teeth were broken. The law allows us to open cases against you but you do not allow us this right.

    9. YOU PERSONALLY THREATEN JOURNALISTS AND ACADEMICS AND STEAL PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE: You have personally threatened journalist and academics who have witnessed your illegal behaviour towards us including your racist insults and your assaults, and you have stolen their cameras. One journalist, Carvin Goldstone, lodged a formal complaint against you and one academic, Raj Patel, tried to make a complaint through the ICD. He failed because the ICD told him that he needed a case number first and no police officers were prepared to open a case against you. If you do not allow us to speak for ourselves and if journalists and academics cannot work freely in your area then how will the truth about your criminality ever be told?

    Therefore tonight we inform you and we inform the public that:

    • We are about to begin our civil court action against you for the wrongful arrest and brutal assault of S’bu Zikode and Philani Zungu and the shooting of Nondomiso Mke on 12 September 2006. We are suing you with the support of XY in Amsterdam and Amnesty International in London. Shanta Reddy will be acting for us.

    • From now on we intend to sue you and any of your officers every time you break the law by taking property from us and our friends (such as our red t-shirts, our loudhailers and the cameras of journalists) and every time you insult, arrest and assault us without good cause.

    • We are asking the Internal Complaints Directorate to undertake an immediate investigation of the whole station with a particular focus on your leadership looking at the endemic and very shocking levels of racism and corruption, systemic organised violence against the poor and blatantly illegal and routinely violent political intolerance. We are currently beginning to compile a dossier of complaints against yourself and this station to submit to the Directorate. We will host a meeting in every Abahlali settlement and branch across Wards 23 and 25 to collect a list of all the complaints and we will also invite people in Sydenham Heights and in the various ratepayers’ associations to add their own complaints to our dossier. Furthermore we will also invite the journalist and the academic who have already made formal complaints against you for, respectively, a threat of violence should they report your violence and confiscation of a camera with pictures of your violence to add their complaints to our dossier.

    • We are asking the Internal Complaints Directorate to recognise that the investigation into the death of Mzwakhe Sithole by the Sydenham Police has not been conducted with any integrity, that it has been misused to further your political agenda against the Kennedy Road Development Committee and Abahlali baseMjondolo, that you have failed to investigate the role of the Sydenham Police in this death and that, given the violent history of severe political intolerance at this police station under you command, this police station can not mount a credible investigation into this or any other matter involving us. We are asking the Internal Complaints Directorate for a credibly independent investigation from officers outside of your jurisdiction who will be able to look fairly and honestly at the role of both Kennedy Road residents and the Sydenham Police in this death. And tonight we demand that you:

    • Immediately release our innocent comrades who are now in their 9th day of a hunger strike in Westville Prison

    • Immediately abandon the investigation by the Sydenham Police into the death of Mzwakhe Stihole

    • Immediately agree to an independent investigation into the death Mzwakhe Sithole to be supervised by the Internal Complaints Directorate that will examine the role of people in the Kennedy Road settlement and in the Sydenham Police Station

    • Immediately step aside pending the outcome of a thorough investigation of the whole police station with a particular focus on your leadership to be undertaken 7 by the Internal Complaints Directorate.

    Given your well known tendency to intimidate and harass even your own police officers as well as people in the communities outside the station it is clear that such an investigation has no chance of success while you are still working here. It will even be difficult to get people to be willing to put their names on our list of complaints against you and the station while you are working here. You are a criminal and you are a violent armed criminal hiding behind all the protection of your high office. The people that you are supposed to protect fear you.

    Therefore it is essential that you step aside while all this work is being done. And tonight we promise that:

    • Immediately after you have stepped down we will approach the Sydenham Police station with a view to setting up a standing committee made up of officers from the station and our communities.

    This committee will meet weekly and will be able to meet at other times in case of emergencies. Its purpose will be to ensure that shack dwellers and the police can work together to ensure that shack dwellers enjoy the protection of the police and that the police enjoy the active support of shack dwellers in their work to end crime in this area.