UnFeeedom Day 2013 in Durban

Click here to see the Isolezwe article on UnFreedom Day and here to see the report on ENCA.

Friday 26 April , 2013
Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA Press Statement

UnFreedom Day in Durban

Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA, a democratic and membership based organization, has held its UnFreedom Day event in Durban every year since 2006. This year UnFreedom Day will be held in Durban and in Cape Town.

Sunday 23rd December 2013
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Shack Fire in the Kennedy Road Settlement

At around 4am a fire hit the eShishunqa section of the Kennedy Road settlement in Clare Estate in Durban. Around twenty shacks were gutted. There have not been any reports of injury or death.

One of the people whose home was destroyed was planning to return to her rural home tomorow and lost all the food and money for stokvel.

Shack fires are not just accidents or natural disasters. They are a result of the way in which we are forced to live. Our movement has been struggling since 2005 for shack fires to be recognised as a political crisis resulting from the contempt with which poor people are treated in this society. This struggle continues. Everytime there is a fire the police and munucipality issue statements blaming the fire on alcohol or what they call "illegal electricity connections". They say these things without making any attempt to find out the real cause of fires. The most common cause of fires is in fact candles. For this reason our struggle against the fires has always included a struggle for the immediate electrification of all shack settlements. When we started our struggle the eThekwini Municipality refused to electrify shack settlements and sent out armed men to disconnect people who connected themselves. As a result of our struggle this inhumane policy has being overturned and a start has been made with electrifying shack settlements in Durban. However the process is too slow and like everything else in this municipality it is being channelled through the local structures of the ruling party rather than being developed as a universal right for all residents.

Lindela 'Mashumi' Figlan

Lindela Figlan was born on the 27th of December 1970 in J.B. Location in Flagstaff in Pondoland in what was then the Transkei bantustan.

His mother was from the Radebe family and she kept the home. His father was secretary of the congress that went into revolt on Ngquza Hill in 1960. More than 4 000 men occupied Ngquza Hill. They were determined to fight for their land and for their dignity. The apartheid state sent in the military and there was a massacre. The courage of the men on Ngquza Hill is always remembered in Pondoland today. The songs from that struggle, like 'Asiyifuni idompas', are still sung today. When Lindela was a young boy the police used to come to their home from time to time, kick in the door and kidnap his father. Sometimes they would take him to a place known as Betani where they would force him to dig potatoes with his hands saying that they did not want to risk damaging their tools. When he came home his fingernails would be red.

27 September 2012
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Three Years after the Attack on our Movement, the Kennedy Road Displacees Remain Homeless and in Exile

The attack on Abahlali baseMjondolo in 2009 set a tone for KwaZulu-Natal to become the province where warlordism and the assassination of leaders and activists has become the order of the day. It was also a warning to the poor that we should accept landlessness, homelessness and all forms of injustices and inequality as the order of the day if we want to survive this democracy.

It was on the night of the 26th, 27th and 28th of September 2009 that the whole political plot was concluded and carried out to assassinate the leadership of Abahlali. We know and we want the nation and the whole world to know that this plot was planned at a very high political level in our province. The plot was not just aimed at reigniting the politic of fear and assassination among those of us who refuse to accept fear. It was also aimed at tearing apart our movement - a movement that has brought us together, a movement that has made us realise how much power and value we have when we stand together. A movement that has shown us how we were made poor by colonial rule, by apartheid and by the post-apartheid state. A movement that has insisted that democracy means that everyone has the same right to participate in decision making and that the land, cities and wealth of our country must be shared and managed equally.

Friday, December 23, 2011
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Terrible Shack Fire in Kennedy Road

Last night, in the middle of the night, at about 00:28, a shack fire took place in Kennedy Road. About 300 shacks went to ashes and approximately 1500 people were left homeless.

Kennedy Road Burns Again

The reason of the fire is still unknown but it is suspected that a candle was left lighted. A small child at about the age of 2 years was badly injured and was rushed to a hospital. No one came to the scene aside from Abahlali baseMjondolo. What a shame it is when even the councillor himself doesn’t bother to come and see how the damage is. The community was hoping that their ward 25 councillor would come to see the damage and offer support. Their hopes were raised when they saw him coming with the Municipality cars. One of the cars was from Housing. But he did not even bother to consider coming to the place where there was this fire. He just ignored the people who had their hopes up and went straight to the hall and told the people that he was there to write the list of those who are suppose to get food vouchers for Christmas. In the past these vouchers have been abused for party political purposes.

Update: The Arnett Drive settlement in Reservoir Hills and the Richmond Farm transit camp were also flooded and in KwaMashu sewer systems and a big pipe burst causing serious damage. People are protesting in a number of places in KwaMashu.

Monday, 28 November 2011
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Release

Floods, destruction and despair in the shacks

Abahlali welcomes the world in our country, our province and in our city. We also welcome progressive delegates to our homes, our settlements and our flooded shacks.

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement
Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Abahlali baseMjondolo have started shacking

On Tuesday, 10 October 2011 at 10:00am in our office we held a press conference
were we said that if the Councillors, Mayors, and all sorts of government do
not meet with the people on the grassroots and have a collective decision
making then we will be unable to stop the anger of the people.

While we were still having the conference the Siyanda ward 41 councillor, Mr
Lucky Mdlalose, was busy employing his own friends to work in the community.
This this resulted in the anger of the community mobilizing them to stop the

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement
2 September 2011

Re-Launching the Kennedy Road AbM Branch

In September 2009 the Kennedy Road Development Committee, a structure that was always subject to annual election with the right to recall ,and which was working hand in hand with Abahlali baseMjondolo, was expelled from Kennedy Road by armed members of the ANC. Willies Mchunu then imposed an ANC committee on the community. He called this the 'liberation' of the settlement and said that the elected structures were 'illegitimate' and that the unelected committee imposed by armed force was 'legitimate'. The committee imposed by Mchunu did nothing for the community. Things went from bad to worse. The houses that the ANC promised after the attack were never built.

Update: 5:03 p.m. A second boy of a similar age was also shot. He has also been admitted to hospital.

6 August 2011
Abahlali baseKennedy Statement

Sixteen Old Boy, the Son of Witness X, Shot by the State in Kennedy Road

This morning the eThekwini Municipality launched another armed raid on the Kennedy Road shack settlement to try and disconnect the people from electricity. As usual there was resistance, unarmed resistance, to this attack from the Municipality. The Municipality's security guards responded by firing live ammunition at the protesters.