Unwanted and derided by their municipalities, the one billion people who live in the world’s shacks and slums are used to being called criminals. But the minute they stand up to such accusations, the minute that the poor reclaim their dignity, is the minute the state rains violence on their heads.

This is what members of the Durban Shackdwellers Movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, have discovered over the past months of struggle. Recent events have confirmed this amply. Five members of the movement, all from the Kennedy Road settlement, are now in their second week on hunger strike in Durban’s notorious Westville Prison. The plight of the Kennedy Road Five indicate the South African government’s new plan to deal with the emerging politics of the poor: criminalise it.

Ndebele's Humiliation
16 January 2006
(See attachment for version with pictures)

by Raj Patel

This weekend, KwaZulu-Natal Premier, S’bu Ndebele went on the campaign trail, assisted by incumbent ANC councillors panning for our votes this election season. It was a shambles, with rallies postponed and backfiring in a number of constituencies. This didn’t happen because the ANC is unpopular. Far from it – the ideals of justice, equality, democracy and dignity for which the majority fought against apartheid are held more strongly than ever. It’s not the people who are rejecting the ANC – it’s the leadership.

Ngonyaka odlule ,uSobaba weTheku u Obed Mlaba wathi ngasekupheleni kuka 2006 amakhulukhulu Abahlali baseMjondolo baseThekwini bazonikezelwa ngezindlu ezikhonekayo ( lezo izindlu ezingabizi kakhulu).Wathi zizokwakhiwa eNyakatho neTheku kuhlelo lwentuthuko kwezezindlu lwezi-R10 billion. Umphakathi usulinde ngaphezu kweminyaka engamashumi amane. Ngemva kokuthi usoBaba weTheku asho lokhu abaHlali baseMjondolo ababange besezwa lutho .,Sadinwa , Sacasuka ngoba uHulumeni awukwazi uksitshela ngekusasa lethu. AbaHlali baseMjondolo Movement ,okuyinhlangano elwela izimfuno zabantu abahlala emjondolo ).Yafaka isicelo ngokomthethto wokunikezzela ngolwazi ,ukuthola ukthi yini esizoyenzelwa uhlumeni (nokuthi yini aseyenzile). Kulelisonto uHulumeni wenzile( njengokufanelekile )ngomthetho. Imiphumela ayimihle neze .

[Note - this story was scheduled for inclusion in the first issue of Izwi Labampofu, but was omitted for reasons of space].

It’s not just shackdwellers who suffer from the imperial behaviour of the eThekwini Municipality. It has been happening to residents in South Durban too. At the end of November, the Deputy Mayor Logie Naidoo announced that pockets of residential land would be rezoned for commercial purposes, right next door to peoples’ homes.

The effect of this would be to turn back the clock to the Apartheid era, with poor black residents being placed side by side with polluting businesses, and with toxic waste being produced right next to the places where families eat, and children play. And those families who object, or who get in the way, will be subject to forced removal.

Published in the Voice of the Turtle and the Mail & Guardian

Friday, 20-May-2005

The Third Nelson Mandela

On Saturday 19 March 750 people from the Kennedy Road settlement in Clare Estate, Durban, blockaded Kennedy Road with burning tires and mattresses for four hours. Fourteen people, including two juveniles, were arrested. On the following Monday, Human Rights Day, 1 200 people tried to march to the Sydenham police station to demand that that either the Kennedy Road 14 be released or else the entire community be arrested because "If they are criminal then we are all criminal". The march was dispersed with dogs and tear gas.

Abahlali base mjondolo bafuna izindlu

Raj Patel
October 19, 2005, The Mercury

Umhlaba wasenyakatho nogu owathathwa ngendluzula kufanele unikezwe
izakhamuzi zakuleyandawo eziphelelwa isineke ezihlala emjondolo.
Mawuhamba ngemoto enyakatho nogu ubona umhlaba owudedangendlale. Umhlaba
owathathwa ngedluzula izinkinsela zikashukela, umhlaba olinywe ngezithuthuku
negazi kuqanjwa amanga ukuthi abantu benziwa amakholwa kanti kuthathwa
umhlaba wabo. Namhlanje lomhlaba sewenziwa izindawo zokudlala igalofu
nalapho kuhlala khona badla izambane likampondo bevunyelwa umthethosisekelo
ukuthi umhlaba womuntu onemali kufanele uqashelwe. Imiphumela yalokhu

From
http://voiceoftheturtle.org/raj/blog/2005/11/go-home-and-make-new-lies.html

Here’s some follow up to last week’s Fucker Stole My Camera post. It’s a sorry story, involving a lot of very frustrating telephone calls. Lucky for you, dear reader, I made notes on every one, and wrote a transcript of a long exchange at a police station. I was wondering how to present this, but the direct transcripts themselves do ample justice to this tale of constabulary absurdism.

It began on Thursday, after I’d got the camera back, with a call to the Independent Complaints Directorate, the place that I’d been pointed to as a reasonable place to lodge a protest at having it swiped by the police in the first place. System Cele, the young woman who had been roughed up and her teeth knocked out (before she was interrogated, it turns out, not afterwards as reported last week) was ready to lodge a protest too. So, we were ready to go.

Sunday - January 15, 2006 3:40 PM

Comrades!

Yesterday, the residents of Kennedy Road, together with comrades from
other informal settlements, successfully prevented KZN Premier, S'bu
Ndebele, from using the settlement as a stage set for an ANC rally.

Despite the ANC's cash, buses, and a *large* police presence, the
Abahlali kept up the resistance, in blistering heat until, finally,
the oleaginous Yacoob Baig called his superiors to tell them that he
hadn't been able to make the settlements safe for democracy.

Fuller reports on this will follow, but there was great coverage on

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=285&fArticleId=2953101

Somewhere to live in dignity

The North Coast cane land was seized and should be redistributed to increasingly frustrated informal settlers
October 19, 2005

By Raj Patel

Drive down the North Coast and you will see acres of land. It is land that has been seized by sugar barons, cultivated by blood and sweat, made legal by the language of colonialism's civilising mission.

Today, the land is parcelled into golf-courses and gated estates, made legal by the conquest of the constitution - private property is sacroscant. But its consequences are no less bloody. For all over Durban, amid the jails of gated communities are the thousands of people locked out of the land, locked into poverty. And they have had enough.

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=285&fArticleId=3240095

Thursday - May 11, 2006 10
Shack Fires are No Accident
The Mercury

by Raj Patel and Richard Pithouse

Before the Treatment Action Campaign successfully politicised AIDS it was widely assumed that people killed by the HI virus had died from natural causes. Now, outside of the Presidency, it is widely accepted that people who die from AIDS are most often killed by a profoundly immoral policy rather than a treatable virus.