A variety of potentially useful documents are archived on this page. They include policy and legal documents, academic articles and writings from struggles in other times and places. These documents are archived here because they (1) happen to be accessible in digital format and (2) have or could be, in various ways, a useful resource for some aspect of the work of some part of the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo. Fact (1) accounts for the fact that almost all the documents here are in English and that this collection has not escaped the limits of Eurocentricism. With regard to (2) that value can be in better understanding what needs to be faced, contested, defended or strived for. In other words some of the documents archived here are here so that we can better understand what we are opposing or so that we can better understand the contesting claims and values on the terrain in which we struggle to assert humanistic reason over the proclivity to violence, destruction and theft that is typical of both the profit calculus that drives capital and the simple hatred that drives the wider will of elites to expel the poor from the cities materially and intellectually. It is necessary to understand profit and hatred as well when they appear masked by apparently technocratic rationality as we do when they appear as the brute force of men with guns and bulldozers and dogs and teargas and stun grenades and sunglasses and water cannons and razor wire.
It is important to remember that only 120 people from the movement have been trained in computer skills so far and only a few people have internet access at work or via local libraries and so cyber space remains very marginal to the intellectual work of the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo (a discussion in a candle lit shack is at its centre). Moreover English is not, at all, the primary language of that work, and most of the intellectual resources available to the University are not written, let alone digitized, and take the form of popular memory of struggles from the Bhambatha rebellion to the Industrial & Commercial Workers' Union in the 20's and 30's, the Cato Manor Women's Riot in 1959, the Phondo revolt the following year, the trade union struggles from '73 and the struggles of civics in the cities and against the chiefs in the rural areas from the 80s, various popular theologies and, most of all (by a very clear distance), ongoing collective reflection on the contemporary experience of life and struggle. For written work produced within the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo click here.
A library of hard copy books is also being developed in the Kennedy Road settlement and some key texts (Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, Selma James etc) are being translated into isiZulu. As the translations are completed they will be archived on this site to ensure wider access.
South African Government Documents (Policy & Law)
- Breaking New Ground – SA Government's New Housing Policy August, 2004
- KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Department of Housing: 2004- 2007 Strategic Plan, 2004
- 'Upgrading Informal Settlements', Chapter 13 of the Housing Code October, 2004
- Realising Socio Economic Rights in South Africa – The Obligations of Local Government, 2006
- The eThekwini Municipality's First Response to Abahlali's Promotion of Access to Information Act request, November 2006
- A draft of the government's Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Amendment Bill, 2006
- The KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Bill, 2006
- The eThekwini Municipality's Land Audit and Housing List Files Received April 2007.
- Parliamentary Debate of the The KwaZulu Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act, August 2007
- The KwaZulu Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act, August 2007
- The Social Housing Bill, 2007
- Framework for an Inclusionary Housing Policy in South Africa, June 2007.
- eThekwini Integrated Development Plan, June 2007
Documents from Other Governments
- The Arusha Declaration Tanzania, 1967
- The Kaantabay sa Kauswagan Ordinance Naga City, Philippines 1997
- Statute of the City Brazil, 2001
Documents from Legal Actions Against Evictions in South Africa
- Two sets of documents from the Legal Resources Centre, successfully fending off the City's illegal evictions in Motala Heights, Nov-Dec 2006, here and here.
- The Founding of Motala Heights An Affidavit by Bhekuyise Ngcobo, 2006
- Comment by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, University of the Witwatersrand on Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Amendment Bill, 2006
- Court orders Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality and the SAPS to rebuild shacks that they illegally destroyed, 30 May 2007.
- Submission of COHRE and the Community Law Centre as Amici Curiae to the Constitutional Court In the matter between the occupiers of 51 Olivia Road, Berea & 197 Main Street, Johannesburg against the City of Jo'burg & others, 2007
- Opinion by Kirsty McLean and Prof. David Zeffertt on the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-Emergence of Slums Act, September 2007.
- Compendium of legal documents filed against Ricky Govender, 2006
- Johannesburg High Court in the matter of Lingwood v Occupiers ERF9 Highlands, 16 October 2007
- Constitutional Court Settlement between Berea Township Residents and Johannesburg City, 30 October 2007.
- Opinion by Kirsty McLean and Prof. David Zeffertt on the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-Emergence of Slums Act, September 2007
- Full Court Papers for Abahlali baseMjondolo Challenge on the Slums Act, February 2008
- Cape High Court Gives Eviction Order to Joe Slovo Residents, 10 March 2008
Contemporary Research on South African Shack Settlements & Cities
- Shack Tenure in Durban by Catherine Cross, 1994
- Delivery from Below Resistance from Above: Electricity and the Politics of Struggle for People's Needs in Thembisa by Franco Barchiesi, 1998
- Integrating the City UNESCO interview with John Abbot, 2000
- Durban: Towards a City Without Citizens by Antoine Bouillon, 2000
- The Impact of the Transition from Informal Housing to Low-Income Housing Projects in South Africa by Warren Smit, 2000
- Policy Aspects for Informal Settlements by Marie Huchzermeyer, 2003
- 'Creative Destruction': Early Modernist Planning in the South Durban Industrial Zone, South Africa by Dianne Scott, 2003
- A Legacy of Control: The Capital Subsidy for Housing, and Informal Settlement Intervention in South Africa by Marie Huchzermeyer, 2003
- Informal Settlement Practice in South Africa’s Metropolitan Cities, Study into the Support of Informal Settlements For the Department of Housing, Pretoria, August 2004
- 'Middle Class Neighbourhoods or African Kraals?' The impact of informal settlements on white identity in post-apartheid South Africa by Richard Ballard, 2004
- Study Into the Support of Informal Settlements Study Commissioned by the Department of Housing and undertaken by the University of Witwatersrand School of Architecture and Planning Together with Independent Experts, 2004
- The Suffering Body of the City by Frederic Le Marcis, 2004
- Reaching the poor: An analysis of the influences on the evolution of South Africa's housing policy by Sarah Charlton & Caroline Kihato, 2005
- Bunkers for the Psyche: How Gates Communities Have Allowed the Privatisation of Apartheid in Democratic South Africa by Richard Ballard, 2005
- The Struggle for In Situ Upgrading of Informal Settlements – Case Studies from Gauteng by Marie Huchzermeyer, 2006
- Informal Settlements as Spaces of Health Inequality: The changing economic and spatial roots of the AIDS pandemic from apartheid to neoliberalism by Mark Hunter, 2006
- Working the Socio-Natural Relations of the Urban Waterscape in South Africa by Alex Loftus, 2007
- Urban Land Markets: How the Poor Access, Hold and Trade Land by Urban LandMark, 2007
Reports on Housing, Evictions and Repression in South Africa
- UN Habitat Global Report on Human Settlements 2003, The Challenge of Slums: The Case of Durban by Colin Marx and Sarah Charlton, 2003
- National (Farm) Evictions Survey by Social Surveys, 2005
- Forced Evictions in Johannesburg by COHRE, 2005
- Pushed to the Periphery: Low-Income Residents in Pietermaritzburg by COHRE and CALS, 2007
- Submission on Human Rights in South Africa to the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations by COHRE, 2008
- Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on adequate housing on his mission to South Africa, Miloon Kothari, 2008
Contemporary Research on Shack Settlements & Shack Dwellers' Struggles Elsewhere
- The Myth of Marginality by Janice Perlman, 1976 (Brazil)
- Un-civil Society: The politics of the 'informal people' by Asef Bayat, 1997 (Iran)
- Towards a Dictatorship Over the Poor: Notes on the penalization of poverty in Brazil by Loïc Wacquant, 2003
- The Myth of Marginality Revisited: The Case of Favelas in Rio de Janeiro, 1969-2003 by Janice Perlman, 2005
- Constructing the 'Right to the City' in Brazil by Edésio Fernandes, 2007
Documents from and Critical Research on the Key Institutions of Contemporary Imperial Power Over Housing Policy (i.e the World Bank, UN Habitat, USAid etc)
- The Challenge of Slums by the United Nations, 2003
- International Trends in Housing Policy by Warren Smit, 2004
- World Charter on the Right to the City Social Forum of the Americas and World Urban Forum, 2004
- The global governance response to informal settlements – relieving or deepening marginalisation? by Marie Huchzermeyer, 2005
Historical Research & Work of Historical Interest (South Africa)
- The Peasant's Revolt by Govan Mbeki, 1964
- Dock Workers, Labour Circulation, and Class Struggles in Durban, 1940-59 by David Hemson, 1977
- Birds in the Cornfield: Squatter Movements in Johannesburg 1944-1947 by Alf Stadler, 1979
- Black Squatters in Durban 1935-50 by Paul Maylam, 1983
- A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924-1930 by Helen Bradford, 1987
- The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on the Dithakong and Mbolompo by Julian Cobbing, 1988
- 'The Cows of Nongoloza': Youth, Crime and the Amalaita Gangs in Durban, 1900-1936 by Paul la Hausse, 1990
- The Struggle for Space in Twentieth Century Durban by Paul Maylam, 1996
- Cato Manor, June 1959: Men, Women, Crowds, Violence, Politics and History by Iain Edwards, 1996
- Segregation, Desegregation and De-racialisation: Racial Politics and the City of Durban by Brij Maharaj, 2002
Historical Research, Work of Historical Interest & Historical Policy Documents (Elsewhere)
- The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population by Edwin Chadwick, London, 1842
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, 1845
- Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, 1983
- Time, Work, Discipline and Industrial Capitalism, 1967 by E.P. Thompson, 1967
- The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th Century by E.P. Thompson
- On Deifying & Defying Authority: Managers & Workers in the Jute Mills of Bengal 1890-1940 by Dipesh Chakrabarty, 1983
- A Concise History of Liberation Theology by Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, 1983
- The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century by Peter Linebuagh & Marcus Rediker, 1990
- The Story of A Marriage: Being a tale of selfrespect unions and what happened to them by V. Geetha, 1999
- All the World Needs a Jolt: Social Movements and Political Crisis in Medieval Europe by Silvia Federici, 2004
- The Great Caliban: The Struggle Against the Rebel Body by Silvia Federici, 2004
Essays
- 'The Great Towns', from The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels, 1845
- The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx, 1851
- Extract from 'A Seventh Man' in Race & Class by John Berger, 1975
- Shall We Leave It to the Experts? by Arundhati Roy, 2002
- Haitian Inspiration by Peter Hallward, 2004
- Purging the Poor by Naomi Klein, 2004
- That have not been asked: ten dispatches about endurance in face of walls by John Berger, 2005
- The de Soto Delusion by John Gravois, 2005
- Fear and Money in Dubai by Mike Davis, 2006
- Hurricane Katrina and the Crisis of Black Politics by the editors of New Beginnings, 2007
- Squatters and the cities of tomorrow by Robert Neuwirth, 2007
- The routes and possibilities of a South – South subversive globalization: Africa and Brazil by Jacques Depelchin, 2007
General Theory
- Power Corrupts the Best by Mikhail Bakunin, 1867
- Organisational Questions of Russian Social Democracy by Rosa Luxemburg, 1904
- On Bureaucracy & Self-activity of The Masses by Aleksandra Kollontay, 1921
- Politics and the English Language by George Orwell, 1946
- Intellectuals by Antonio Gramsci, in the Prison Notebooks, 1949
- Voluntarism and the Social Masses by Antonio Gramsci, in the Prison Notebooks, 1949
- Some Theoretical and Practical Aspects of "Economism" by Antonio Gramsci, in the Prison Notebooks, 1949
- On the Women Question by Raya Dunayevskaya, 1951
- The Fact of Blackness by Frantz Fanon, 1952
- Every Cook Can Govern by C.L.R. James, 1956
- The Working Class and Organisation by Cornelius Castoriadis, 1959
- The Pitfalls of National Consciousness by Frantz Fanon, 1961
- Excepts from the Critique of Dialectical Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1960
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, 1968
- Sex, Race and Class by Selma James, 1973
- How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney, 1973
- Philosophy of Liberation by Enrique Dussel, 1980
- Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis, 1981
- Experiences of Democracy in Africa: Reflections on Practices of Communalist Palaver as a Method of Resolving Contradictions by Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, 1985
- Black Consciousness 1977-1987 by Nigel Gibson
- The Underside of Modernity by Enrique Dussel, 1993
- Linking the Urban and Rural by Mahmood Mamdani, 1996
- Figures of the Thinkable (including Passion and Knowledge) by Cornelius Castoriadis, 1997 (English translation, 2005)
- Du Bois's Humanistic Philosophy of Human Sciences by Lewis Gordon, 2000
- The Debt Crisis, Africa and the New Enclosures by Silvia Federici, 2001
- The Pitfalls of South Africa's 'Liberation' by Nigel Gibson, 2001
- Moving the State: The Politics of Democratic Decentralization in Kerala South Africa and Porto Alegre by Patrick Heller, 2001
- Ten Thesis on Politics Jacques Rancière, 2001
- Change the World Without Taking Power by John Holloway, 2002
- Fanon and the Possibility of Post-Colonial Critical Imagination by Ato Sekyi-Otu, 2003
- Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber, 2004
- Badiou's Politics: Equality and Justice by Peter Hallward, 2004
- New Introduction to Steve Biko's I Write What I Like by Lewis Gordon, 2005
- The Not Yet Counter-Partisan by Grant Farred, 2005
- The Politics of Prescription by Peter Hallward, 2005
- Democratic Materialism and the Materialist Dialectic by Alain Badiou, 2005
- Is Fanon Relevant? Translations, the postcolonial imagination and the second stage of total liberation by Nigel Gibson, 2006
- African-American Philosophy, Race and the Geography of Reason by Lewis Gordon, 2006
- What is the Left? by Alain Badiou, 2006
- Selma James & the Wages for Housework Campaign by Shemon Salam, 2007
- On the Coloniality of Being by Nelson Maldonado Torres, 2007
- Civil society, citizenship and the politics of the (im)possible: rethinking militancy in Africa by Michael Neocosmos, 2007
- Through the Hellish Zone of Non-Being: Thinking Through Fanon, Disaster, and the Damned of the Earth by Lewis Gordon, 2007
Theory & the City
- 'The Paris Commune' from The Civil War in France by Karl Marx, 1871
- The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State by Mikhail Bakunin, 1871
- The Housing Question by Frederick Engels, 1872
- The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin, 1935
- Building, Dwelling, Thinking by Martin Heidegger, 1951 (translated 1971)
- 'The Paris Commune Illuminates and Deepens the Content of Capital', Chapter 6 of Marxism & Freedom by Raya Dunayevskaya, 1958
- Theses on the Paris Commune by the Situationist International, 1962
- Urbanism and Community Planning by Kenneth Rexroth, 1964
- 'On Violence' from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, 1965 (Constance Farrington's translation)
- 'Territorial Domination' chapter 7 from The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, 1967 (Kenn Knabb's translation)
- 'Cities and Insurrections', an excerpt from Revolutionaries by Eric Hobsbawm, 1973
- Housing by People by John Turner, 1976
- Spatial Deconcentration in Washington D.C. by the Midnight Notes Collective, 1981
- Urban Development on the Basis of Autonomy – politico-philosophical and ethical framework for Urban Planning and Management by Marcello Lopez de Souza, 2000
- Logics of Urban Polarisation: the view from below by Loïc Wacquant, 2000
- The Wall & the Eye an interview with Eyal Weizman, 2002
- Logic of the Site by Alain Badiou, 2003
- No Tresspassing! by Anders Corr, 2004
- Places of their Own: African-American Suburbanization in the Mid Twentieth Centruty by Andrew Wiese, 2004 (Excerpt on 'urban renewal' and 'slum clearnace' as ethnic cleansing)
- Decivilizing and Demonizing: the social and symbolic remaking of the black ghetto by Loïc Wacquant, 2004
- The Topology of Being and the Geopolitics of Knowledge: Modernity, empire, coloniality by Nelson Maldonado Torres, 2004
- 'The Paris Commune: A Political Declaration on Politics' in Polemics, by Alain Badiou, 2006
- Together with the state, despite the state, against the state by Marcello Lopez de Souza, 2006
- Fanon and Space: colonization, urbanization, and liberation from the colonial to the global city by Stephan Kipfer, 2007
- The Ignored Philosopher and Social Theorist: The Work of Henri Lefebvre by Stanley Aronowitz, Situations, 2007
- The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape by Slavoj Žižek, 2007
- Liberated Territories by Slavoj Žižek, 2007
- Grassroots Political Militants: Banlieusards and Politics by Emilio Quadrelli, 2007
- Lethal Theory by Eyal Weizman, 2007
- The Militarization of the World's Urban Peripheries by Raúl Zibechi, 2008
- Surveilliance, the Law & the Rules by Martin Mongin, 2008
- The Communist Hypothesis by Alain Badiou, 2008
Mike Davis's Planet of Slums and Responses
- Mike Davis, 'Planet of Slums' New Left Review, 2004
- Slavoj Žižek, 'The Free World…of Slums' In These Times, 2004
- Richard Pithouse, 'Thinking Resistance in the Shanty Town', Mute Magazine 40, 2006
- Vyjaynnathi Rao, 'Slum as Theory: The South/Asian city and globalization' International Journal of Urban & Regional Research, 2006
- Jan Breman, 'Slumlands', New Left Review 40, 2006
- Tom Angotti, 'Apocalyptic anti-urbanism: Mike Davis and his planet of slums', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 30.4 December 2006 961–7
- David Cunningham, 'Slumming it: Mike Davis' Grand Narrative of Urban Revolution', Radical Philosophy 142 March-April 2007.
- Jeremy Harding, 'It Migrates to Them', London Review of Books, Vol. 29 No. 5, 8 March 2007.
- Richard Pithouse, Review, 'Planet of Slums', Journal of Asian & African Studies, 2007
- Alan Gilbert, 'The Return of the Slums: Does Language Matter?', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2007
- Tom Meyer, Review, 'Planet of Slums', 2007
- Leo Zeilig and Claire Ceruti, 'Slums, resistance and the African working class', International Socialism: A quarterly journal of socialist theory, 2007
Other online archives with useful technical information, analysis & theory
- Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions, Online Library
- Development Action Group, Publications
- LibCom.Org Library
- Marxists Internet Archive Library
- Research on Informal Settlement Policy and Intervention in the School of Architecture and Planning, WITS
- Free Political Documentaries (video)
Other movement & solidarity sites
- Central Única das Favelas, Brazil
- Collective Reinventions, Mexico
- Combined Harare Residents' Association, Zimbabwe
- Electronic Intifada, Palestine
- Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), Mexico
- Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti
- Freedom of Expression Institute, South Africa
- Haiti Action
- International Alliance of Inhabitants
- Kafila, India
- Laboratório de Políticas Públicas, Brazil
- El Libertario, Venezuela
- Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), Brazil
- Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (MTST), Brazil
- New Beginnings, USA
- L'Organisation politique, France
- Project South, USA
- Right to the City, USA
- Sanhati, Bengal, India
- Sendika, Turkey
- Urban Poor Associates, Phillipines
- Tenants and Workers United, USA
- Treatment Action Campaign, South Africa
- University of the Poor, USA
- Via Campesina, International
- Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign
- Women of Zimbabwe Arise
Bloggs etc
- African Project for a Participatory Society (Movement news & theory)
- Black Looks (Sokari Ekine)
- Claiming Public Space
- Banksy (Painting on the City)
- Eyal Weizman's Blog (Architecture)
- Forget Photography (Antonios Vradis)
- InternAfrica (News on settlements & struggles in Cape Town)
- Radical Urban Theory
- Re-imaging the Favela (Dionisio Gonzalez)
- Subtopia (Bryan Finoki)
- Stuffed and Starved (Raj Patel)
- Squatter City (Robert Neuwirth)
- Voices Rising (Steph Lane)
Various Academic Articles & Other Documents in PDF