http://www.redpepper.org.uk/shack-fightback/
Bandile Mdlalose talks to Lorna Stephenson about Abahlali baseMjondolo, a radical poor people’s movement in South Africa
Bandile Mdlalose is the general secretary of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shack dwellers’ movement, in South Africa. Politically active ‘since she was born’, Bandile, now 24, became involved in Abahlali in 2008 before becoming secretary in 2010. She describes the organisation’s role as ‘to fight, protect, promote and advance the dignity of the poor in South Africa’.
Abahlali is a grass-roots organisation, which protests about the lack of housing for poor people through a variety of means. These range from mobilising quickly to stop shack evictions to taking the government to court – and winning – on its plans to demolish shack settlements and push residents into ‘transit camps’, supposedly in aid of the UN’s millennium development goal of developing all informal settlements by 2014. Abahlali works with the Landless People’s Movement, the Rural Network and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign in the Poor People’s Alliance, a network of radical poor people’s movements.
When did Abahlali baseMjondolo start and what prompted it?
It started in 2005 in a settlement called Kennedy Road. The people in the Kennedy Road shack settlement have been promised things so many times – that they will build houses, service delivery for the community – and eventually they felt enough was enough. The community mobilised themselves and decided to protest. A number of people were arrested.
They were asked ‘What organisation are you from?’ The community decided to organise itself and create a name – Abahlali baseMjondolo, which is the Zulu word for ‘shack residents’. After that other shack dweller communities decided to join in. Now we have become very big.