This letter was drafted on 22 May 2010 and delivered, by hand, by Bishop Rubin Phillip to Peter Hallward from the Middlesex Philosophy Department on 26 May 2010.
Letter of Solidarity from Abahlali baseMjondolo to the Middlesex Philosophy Department and all the People Struggling to Defend the Department
In September 2006 S’bu Zikode and Philani Zungu, then the President and Deputy President of our movement, were stopped by the police on their way to a radio interview. They were arrested and then tortured. Radical Philosophy published an article by Richard Pithouse on what had happened. That article was important because it told the truth. It was also important because it took some of the truth of our struggle to people in other countries and that knowledge helped to create a foundation for a living solidarity between our struggle and our movement and struggles and movements elsewhere.
In February 2007 we decided to organise an event in solidarity with Fanmi Lavalas in Haiti. To prepare for that event we read and discussed Peter Hallward’s article Haitian Inspiration. We translated it, verbally in our meeting, into isiZulu. We were going to prepare a written translation of this article into isiZulu but, as often happens, we just never found the time for this important work. But we still aim to do it. We organised in solidarity with Fanmi Lavals again in 2008 and 2009. In these years we also read and discussed Peter Hallward’s interview with Jean-Bertrand Aristide and in 2009 we also read the review that Richard Pithouse wrote about Peter Hallward’s book Damming the Flood. Richard Kuper, from Friends of Worker’s Education in South Africa in London, donated a copy of Damming the Flood to our library which was in the Kennedy Road shack settlement. We lost many books, including the copy of Radical Philosophy that has an article on Abahlali baseMjondolo, in the attack on our movement in September 2009. But our copy of Damming the Flood was among the books that were saved by Mama Nxumalo during the attack. It is now in the library in our new office.
In March 2009 Peter Hallward was one of the speakers at a conference in London on the meaning of communism. He wrote a paper called The Will of the People that included a quote from S’bu Zikode who had earlier called for ‘a living communism’ to be the goal of our ‘living politics’. In April that year we had a seminar at our own university to discuss this paper and the conference in London. We all agree that we are communists because we believe that everyone is equal and that the land and wealth of the world must be shared. But our living politics was founded on a rejection of many ways of controlling the poor and one of those was what we first called the ‘zim zims’ – people that come to the poor and pretend to be the experts on our struggles by talking about neo-liberalism, socialism and all the other isms and schisms without ever talking to us about our lives, our struggles, what we really want, what we can really do and how we can really do it. We always felt that this way of doing politics is just another way for another elite to keep us in our place. In our discussion of communism one comrade argued strongly that you can’t go to a meeting where people are discussing evictions or arrests or the difficulties in organising a march and talk about communism even if you say that it is a living communism formed and owned by the people. He argued that people only trust our movement because our living politics puts all the power in the hands of the people. Another comrade argued that we had already developed the idea of a living politics and a living solidarity to make a clear distinction between what we are for and what we are against and so, maybe, we should do the same with the idea of communism. She was arguing that we should pull this idea back into the hands of the people.
After the attack on our movement our discussions were seriously disrupted due to repression and the personal costs of that repression for many comrades. But the state continued its general attack on the poor and many people turned to us for support. We have launched nine new branches since the attack and some comrades were worried that people might want to join our movement because we are good at stopping evictions but without being really committed to our politics. In the last month we have succeeded in returning to the practice of having slow and careful political discussions. We have gone back to the beginning, back to the history of our struggle, back to the idea of a living politics and to the meaning of Abahlalism. If we can keep our discussions going and keep our university alive in the middle of all the pressures we are under then maybe we will return to this question of communism.
When we were able to send two comrades to London in early September 2009 they stayed with Peter Hallward. We were amazed at how this brilliant man humbles himself. We were very impressed with his understanding of the difference between an NGO politics and a real politics of the poor. Before we left we made it clear to Peter that he would always be welcome to stay with us in Durban or with any of our comrades anywhere in South Africa.
When we were attacked in late September 2009 Peter Hallward mobilised a group of philosophers from around the world to issue a statement in solidarity with us. It is a strange thing but the truth is that many academics who say that they are socialists or radicals insist, just like the politicians, that the poor must be their followers and not their comrades. When we, as the poor, organise ourselves and request that academics talk to us and not for us; and that they think with us and not for us; and that they should respect that we will make decisions in our meetings and come to these meeting to negotiate solidarity instead of trying to buy our support by secretly offering money to individual militants they often get very angry with us. They see us in the same way as the state does and they attack us in exactly the same language as the state. We have learnt that it is impossible to develop any living solidarity with academics who do not believe that the poor can think. The statement that Peter Hallward organised was very powerful. It opened the eyes of many people – people who are willing to understand that being poor is not the same as being stupid or the same as being a person that is willing to follow anyone that throws money at you.
On our understanding philosophy is the struggle to understand the way that the world really is. On our understanding a radical philosophy must do two things:
1. It must pay close attention to the presence of human beings in the world and to the equal dignity of all human beings.
2. It must always be looking for ways to change the world in a way that puts human dignity at the centre of the world.
If our understanding of what philosophy is, and of what radical philosophy is, is a good one then the attempt to close down the Philosophy Department at your university is an attack on one part of the struggle to humanise the world.
It is not clear to us whether this attack is really just one more case of money being given more importance than people. Our own struggle is often a struggle to put human beings before money. We are always told that the land that we have occupied is too valuable for us and so we must accept eviction to government shacks far outside the cities. We are always told that it is unaffordable to give us electricity and toilets and all the things that a person needs to be safe in this world. If you are under attack because your bosses are blind to the value of human beings and can only see the value of money then we support you 100%.
But some comrades have asked if it could be that the real reason that you are under attack is because you do radical philosophy and because you offer a real and living solidarity to real struggles around the world. When our movement started at the end of 2005 there were three academics in the movement. By the end of 2006 they had all lost their jobs. In our experience there are a lot of people who become extremely nervous and angry when they see academics and the organised poor working together. For some reason a living solidarity between academics and the organised poor really frightens all kinds of people in the state and some people in the NGOs and in the universities. They seem to be much happier when everyone is safely in their place. They want the academics to be doing their thinking on one side and the poor to be doing our suffering, or our work, on the other side. When academics and the poor agree to think and to struggle together as equals it is taken as a big problem by many people. If you are under attack because you are doing radical philosophy at Middlesex University then we also support you 100%.
Please let us know if there is anything that we can do to support your struggle from South Africa. We could, for instance, organise a protest if your bosses visit this country. You are always welcome to visit us in our country and, along with our academic comrades from other countries, like Jacques Depelchin from the Congo, Marcelo Lopes de Souza from Brazil and Raj Patel and Nigel Gibson in America, as well as the many students from all around the world that have spent time with our movement, to be part of the discussions in our university (although we must say that these discussions are set back when repression is severe and we are just beginning to rebuild them now).
We wish you luck and courage in this struggle.
In solidarity
Abahlali baseMjondolo (in Durban)