Zodwa Nsibande
Zodwa Nsibande was elected as the first General Secretary of the Abahlali baseMjondlo Youth League on 16 June 2008 and re-elected on 16 June 2009. She is also the National Administrator of the movement working out of the office in the Kennedy Road settlement. She is 25.
Zodwa has been involved in all the activities of the movement but has played a particularly important role in the annual Back to School Campaigns, the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo, resistance to evictions, resistance to xenophobica, solidarity with comrades who have been arrested, Haiti solidarity, UnFreedom Day Campaigns, the 2008 City Wide Shack Fire Summit and preparing for the movement’s Annual General Meetings.
Zodwa was born in eNhlalakahle in eMdlovana (Greytown) in 1984. Her grandfather worked on the railways and her grandmother worked for the Municipality. Her father was an ambulance driver. Her mother, Zandile Nsibande, moved to Durban in 1991 and found work as a sewing machinist in a clothing factory in Tongaat. In 1997 she moved to the Kennedy Road settlement after she was retrenched.
Zodwa moved to Kennedy Road in 2003 after completing High School in eMdlovana to be able to further her studies. She studied Information Technology at Durban Commercial College. In 2005 she and her mother were part of the group of activists that founded Abahlali baseMjindolo. In 2006 she was very badly burnt when a paraffin stove exploded and had to drop out of her studies in her third year.
For Zodwa:
“The Youth League is a space where young leaders of Abahlali baseMjondolo are being groomed so that when their time for leadership comes they can take on their responsibilities. Leaders are not born. They are made in struggle. They learn through long experience in struggle. A leader must know how to listen to everyone, to create space for everyone to speak, to belong and to be respected. A leader must know how to be led. A leader must be able to face repression with courage.
What is important in development is human development whereby a person must grow in mind and social development whereby a person must move from a shack to a house. We have seen the shift in human development. We created this shift ourselves in our movement. My wish is to now see the shift in social development. We are still struggling to see this shift.”