This chapter from Jacob Byrant's thesis on Abahlali looks at the movement's narrative of itself. It is based on time spent with the movement as a day to day participant observer and a large number of in-depth interviews conducted in November 2005 and August 2006. To go straight to the fully annotated .doc version click here.

Chapter 3: Abahlali’s Narrative

“Our politics will therefore mean that everyone, every human being, can understand without actually going to political schools, without referring to any books, because it is about what you need. So our politics is elementary politics for it answers everyone’s questions about humanity”

The police reported that there were more than 6000 'illegal' protests in 2005. The vast majority of these protests were aimed at local targets, most were organised in shack settlements and many took the form of road blockades. This tactic was used with particular effect in Cape Town and has recently been used to good effect from the Orange Farm settlement in Johannesburg. The state responded to the 2005 national outbreak of road blockades by sending in the National Intelligence Agency to find the Third Force. Much of the NGO left responded by dismissing these protests, protests from which they were entirely alienated, as 'spontaneous' and continuing to obsess about which individual (with no mass constituency) made which (entirely futile) gesture of proposing what strategy for 'the left' at some or other NGO forum. Both views assume a lack of serious political thinking in the settlements from which these road blockades were being organised. Because the Kennedy Road blockade led to the emergence of a large and sustained movement it has now assumed something of a mythic character.