Urgent Press Statement
Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape

Count Down

The Right to the City Campaign

Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape, 21 days ago launched it’s 'the right to the city campaign’. Today the world and South Africans are counting few days before the kick off of the 2010 FiFa World cup, also Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape is counting few hours before kick starting it’s campaign.

Part of the aim of the campaign is to build shacks outside Green Point soccer stadium at Cape Town, occupying governmental offices, invading open public spaces within the city and occupying unused hotels, flats and schools within the City.

Incontro con gli attivisti di Abahali baseMondo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l0b5p

The Poor Have the Right to be Housed in Well Located Land

by Rosalie de Bruijn (Dutch Researcher)

On Saturday the 22nd of May 2010 “the Right to the City Campaign” was launched in TT informal settlement, Site B, Khayelitsha. The aims of the campaign of the Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape (AbM-WC) are very clear: to show the world that the World Cup 2010 is not benefitting the poor, but is instead further marginalizing the urban poor from places they called home and from public spaces where they found their main sources of income. - “We want city life, tired of promises!” -

The Poor Must Claim the Right to be Housed Within Well Located Land

Mzonke Poni

What does this notion (The Right to the City) means to the poor? This simply means:

1. It means improving the quality of life (as the preamble to the Constitution says the government has a duty to ‘improve the quality of life of all citizen and free the potential of each person.

2. It will promote social and economic development (as section 152 of the Constitution says local government must provide services to communities in a sustainable way, it must promote social and economic development, and furthers says it must encourage communities and community organizations to be involved in the matters of local government.

A Solidarity Statement from Abahlali baseMjondolo for the Easter Monday Cloverdean Community Prayer Meeting

Monday, 5 April 2010

We wish to thank ESSET, the Cloverdean Community and all participating churches, organisations and individuals for making this call for solidarity with the Cloverdean Community in Benoni, Johannesburg. Abahlali baseMjondolo believe it is necessary and just that in any normal society people who have a duty to God and to their country will not be silent in the face of oppression.

We have been informed about what has been done to you. It is incredible that while the politicians are celebrating ‘Human Rights Day’ the rich continue to use the state to wage war on the poor. We have been told how 75 families were evicted from the Cloverdean Farm where they had been living for more than 20 years. We have heard that old people and small babies are among those who have been driven from their homes and their land. We know that one of the elderly women of your community had a stroke out in the open land where you are now living and that she was discharged from the hospital back onto that open land. We have been made aware that one of the women of your community has been raped in the bushes. The difficulties faced by your children have been shared with us. Some of us know very well how it is to wake up on a piece of open land after a night of rain and to then have to get children clean and tidy to go to school.

The High Cost of the Right to the City

March 2010

Notes from a meeting of Abahlali baseMjondolo in preparation for the World Urban Forum (WUF): “The Right to the City”.

It is our usual practice when we send delegates to other people's meetings that we get together as a movement and discuss our collective view so that our delegates can take a mandate that is based on our 'home-made' politics. In this case there will be chances for our comrades to connect with other movements from around the world as well, so it is all the more important to be clear on our own home-cooked politics of Abahlalism – our 'living politics'.

http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/217.1

The Right to the City

by Richard Pithouse

Governments around the world tend to force poor people off well located and therefore valuable urban land and into peripheral ghettoes. From New Orleans to Bombay and Johannesburg the story is the same.

One motivation for this is to transfer valuable land from the poor to the rich to create a subsidy for elite development at the direct expense of the poor. A useful secondary consequence of this for many governments is that people living outside of state control can be forced to pay for housing and services in the peripheral relocation developments. Another common motivation for forcing the poor off well located urban land is to fragment and weaken popular movements by dispersing the classes that are potentially dangerous to elite interests into fragmented ghettos. Here people are isolated from each other, kept at a safe distance from the spaces of elite power and often housed in developments under strict state management. In many countries government housing projects have the feel of a carceral space and are closely monitored by the police, various kinds of government officials and local party structures.