Shackdwellers International (SDI) is USAID funded NGO created to set up and support shackdweller organisations around the world. In other words shut them up. The South African branch of the SDI works closely with the local and national government and we all know how supportive they have been of the shackdweller movement in Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg and the rural areas. Enter the Gates Foundation with a $10million handout to help the South African government put an end to the shackdwellers movement.

Abahlali baseMjondolo have responded to SDI, the Bill Gates Foundation and the latest scheme to silence and kill off the poor.

We have a clear analysis on what the money that our government and the Gates Foundation have given SDI is for. It is true that some of it will go to build houses. But it is important to remember that there are two kinds of houses. Some houses are built in human dumping grounds outside of the cities and people are forced to go to these houses against their will. In these houses people sometimes just rot. These houses are often worse for people than shacks. They are a kind of oppression just like forced removal to townships outside the cities was a kind of oppression under apartheid. Other houses are planed with people and are built where people need them. In these houses people can grow. If Gate’s $10 millions builds some of the right kind of houses we will welcome them as fruits of the long struggles of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, the Landless People’s Movement and all the communities that have been blockading roads and organising protests around the country for the last few years. These protests have created such a crisis that the government here, and its supporters outside, recognise that something has to be done. Therefore the houses built will be fruits of struggle even though they will not be given to the people who have struggled. They will be a reward for obedience. This is how things work. We therefore see the risk that these fruits of struggle will be used to try and persuade people in movements and organisations that struggle to give up their autonomy and to cease struggling which means to stop thinking and to stop demanding the right of ordinary people to also be able to plan the
future of our cities.

It is clear to us that everyone wants to speak and act in the name of the poor but that very, very few organisations are willing to speak to the poor. At first the government wanted the councillors to speak for us. Most times this failed completely. Most times the councillors spoke for the rich in their wards. If the ratepayer’s association wanted shack dwellers chased out of a ward and the shack dwellers wanted houses built in that ward the councillor would work with the ratepayers’ association to chase the shack dwellers out. This is why we buried out councillors in 2005. This is why people have been protesting against their councillors all over the country. The councillors have failed the poor and they continue to fail the poor – right now in Motala Heights both the Ward Councillor (Dimba) and the PR Councillor (Naranjee) are working with the gangster businessman Ricky Govender to chase the poor out of Motala Heights.

Tags:
Shackdwellers;
Durban + South Africa
Abahlali baseMjondolo;
Bill Gates Foundation
Shackdwellers International