The whole Abahlali baseMjondolo movement is being criminalised as they are presently under attack from the Municipality and the police in Durban particularly the Sydenham police station and Superintendent Glen Nayager - [seen below last night Tuesday]

The March - Tuesday 10th April

Last night representatives from all the Abahlali baseMjondolo settlements had planned a legal march on Sydenham police station and a candlelit vigil with members of the local churches. However the march was was prevented from taking place and the Movement sought legal advice. The whole matter is complicated as usual the Sydenham police have been playing tricks with the Abahlali claiming they did not attend a meeting when they did. But the police changed the venue of the meeting without informing Abahlali so in fact two meetings took place. By 6pm people from all over had started to arrive at Kennedy Road thinking that the proposed march was to go ahead. People came from all over including Pinetown and as far away as Pietermaritzburg. Meanwhile Nayager arrives with his brute squad for backup. The people of Abahlali all gather at the open space by the office and begin to sing and dance and by this time journalists have arrived, S’bu and his group are back from the meeting with the lawyers and the church representatives are there as well. S’bu received a phone call from Nayager threatening him if the march went ahead but S’bu said that the memorandum was going to be delivered that night. A group of 14 people were chosen to take the memorandum to Nayager - 2 priests 8 women and 4 men. Once at the police station they all knelt down with the candles and S’bu gave the memorandum to Nayager and they left. An extraordinary day in the struggle of the Abahlali base Mjondolo.

Kennedy Road Settlement

Since the early morning arrests on Human Rights Day, 5 Kennedy Road leaders remain in prison and are now in the 9th day of their hunger strike in protest against the wrongful arrests which they believe are politically motivated to destroy the Kennedy Road Development Committee and the whole Abahlali movement which has been successful in preventing the development for commercial and residential purposes land that was promised to them. All the men have now been moved to Westville Prison hospital. The men were arrested following the death of a man from outside the settlement who committed a mugging . The man who was caught and assaulted by some community members and also the police who had been called in and he subsequently died in police custody.

The Kennedy Road Committee have now issued a memorandum to superintended Glen Nayager and have taken out civil proceedings against him for the wrongful arrest and brutally against members. Abahlali leader, S’bu Zikode finally managed to visit the 5 prisoners on hunger strike who are in a high security area with no less than 7 gates to go through before reaching them! They are very weak and 3 of them can no longer stand - no one knows how they will get to the court on Friday as they are not fit to go in the police vans.

Lacy Road Settlement

Last Thursday a fire broke out at the Lacy Road settlement at about 3am in the morning burning 8 shacks. These fires are not accidents as since the local Municipality decided to end the electrification of shack settlements on the grounds that they are ‘temporary’ leaving residents which is ridiculous because Kennedy Road has been there for 30 years fires have become a regular occurence with loss of life serious injuries and loss of property.

In Durban shack dwellers often do everything that they can to cope with the constant danger of fires. In many settlements there are volunteers who take turns at standing watch for fires. When half of the Lacey Road settlement in Sydenham burnt down last month the shack dwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, was able to able to send in teams of relief workers from nearby settlements to clean up and reconstruct the settlement and to use various networks in and outside of the settlements to arrange large donations of food, clothing, blankets and building materials.

Abahlali baseMjondolo have also invested a lot of time in looking for safer options for cooking and lighting. Recently, a promoter of a new fuel - ethanol (a sop for SA’s sugar cane industry) - came to the Kennedy Road settlement, to advertise a stove that is supposedly cleaner, safer and cheaper than paraffin. The stove is able to use less fuel than a paraffin stove partly because the fuel itself burns hotter. The savings come from less money spent on fuel. But only if you can turn the thing off when it has finished
cooking.

Motala Heights settlement

On Easter Sunday armed Municipal security arrived at the settlement demanding a list of the names of all the people living in the settlement and not covered by the court judgement in favour of Motala residents who didn’t want to be evicted. Everyone refused to reveal any names. No dates were set for the evictions which are in any case illegal but the Municipality and police could care less. Quotes from previous evictions [source Durban Mercury]

When the evictions happened…The South African law and the constitution didn’t work for us. They were pointing guns at us, threatening us, meantime we were fighting for our rights [as guaranteed in the law]. One comrade came asking them “What about section 26″ but they didn’t say anything…When our chairperson came to ask ‘By what right and by what law can you this?’ Teargas just got thrown in his face.

We are the group from what we will call the ‘tenant shacks’. We are renting the tin houses from private owners. We are not only Indians – there are Africans too who are renting there. We must talk about the pain the people are going through. This is not just about the feelings in our heart but also the properties – the dwellings and the things in their dwellings. In these tin houses, when it rains, it’s like there is no roof there is so much leaking. Our children area being affected. In the rainy weather many are not going to school because they are sleeping on wet beds and they and their clothes are dirty and wet. There is pain also for the old people and the pensioners and those who are handicapped. Think about what these bad conditions mean for those who are bedridden – it is pitiful to see. And transport is a problem – it is hard to get from place to place. We are trying to improve our lives in different ways and this makes necessary to get from place to place but where we are living there are few taxis and you can wait for an hour and half before you get a lift. We poor people have no say with the landlords. If we ask for improvements, they say they’ll increase the rents – which are too high already. As for the law, the implementation favours the rich. From the Municipality we see favouritism for the rich and the poor have no say at all. The rich have the money and the poor do not. If we, the poor people, want someone to come to deal with a problem (e.g., health inspectors, water problems, anything that is affecting us) there is no-one who comes to deal with it. But the rich snap their fingers and it’s sorted. The poor are being pushed out. They say it’s because it is private lands we are on, we are just told and forced to go

9 Point Memorandum

1. RACISM: You, and many of your officers, are guilty of extreme, systematic and casual racism towards African people.

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.

3. YOU MAKE POVERTY A CRIME: We have very few toilets in our settlements.

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.

5. YOU PROTECT AND WORK WITH CRIMINALS: We have always said that there are poor criminals and that there are also rich criminals.

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.

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.

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.

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. [Full text]

Tags: Shackdwellers; Durban + South Africa; Abahlali baseMjondolo