Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement
3 March 2010
The Third Force is Gathering its Strength
The goal that our attackers wanted to achieve when they ambushed us on the night of 26 September 2009 has not been achieved. A surprise attack was launched against our movement, the spontaneous resistance to the attack was broken by the police, our office was destroyed, hundreds of our members and supporters were chased from Kennedy Road, thirteen of our comrades were jailed and illegally detained and we have been banned from openly organising in the settlement where our movement was founded. But our movement was never just in Kennedy Road. Before the attack there were fifteen settlements affiliated to our movement in Durban and more than 50 branches across Durban, Pinetown, Tongaat, Howick, Pietermaritzburg and Cape Town. The goal of the attack was to destroy our movement to punish us for our victory against the Slums Act, to deny us the victory that we had won to have the Kennedy Road settlement upgraded where it is and to neutralise us before 2010. But our movement still exists. In fact it continues to grow. Since the attack we have launched four new branches and we will launch another four new branches soon.
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement
29 October 2009
Invitation to the Celebration of the Abahlali baseMjondolo Victory Against the Notorious and Now Buried Slums Act
On 14 October 2009 the Constitutional Court ruled against the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government and in favour of Abahlali baseMjondolo. The court found that Section 16 of the Slums Act was unconstitutional and invalid. The Slums Act now has been struck down.
Abahlali baseMjondolo will be holding a celebration of our victory against the Slums Act this Sunday, 1 November, at 9am. The celebration will take place the Richmond Farm Transit Camp. All progressive communities, journalists and members of the public are welcome.
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Press Statement from Abahlali baseSiyanda B
eThekwini Electricity Policy Takes Another Life – 16 Year Old Boy Dies in Siyanda
Community Meeting, Siyanda, 30 July 2009. The meeting was to plan a memorial for Sakhephi Zenda - a police helicopter was flying low overhead...
Sakhephi Emmanuel Zenda, 16, was discovered dead at 7:00 a.m. on Monday 27 July 2009 in B Section, Siyanda. It seems that he had been electrocuted from a badly made connection during the night. He was a grade 8 pupil at Zeph Dlomo High School in KwaMashu.
KWAMASHU – 23 July 2009 – At 3pm this afternoon, Nandi Mandela, along with police, and a demolition team, attempted to evict three families living in the Richmond Farm transit camp. Mandela and the team broke the locks on the front door, entered, and dumped all the families’ personal belongings outside. The families were at work and school at the time. They received no notice of the eviction. A truck waited to transport them from the site.
Meanwhile, 6 other families living in shacks in nearby Siyanda Section B were told they must move to the Richmond Farm transit camp. They are to replace the 3 families, whose eviction was attempted today. These families also received no official eviction notice, which by law, must be ordered by the courts and delivered by the sheriff. The 6 families are to be forcibly removed to the transit camp to make way for a fence that will run alongside the MR577, a new freeway construction. Nandi Mandela is a representative of Linda Masinga & Associates, a consultancy firm hired by the Department of Transport.
'Mpume Nompumelelo II', a short film by Elkartasun Bideak showing the illegal destruction of Mpume Nompumelelo's home, 28 May 2009. To see more short films by Elkartasun Bideak click here.
Update: Click here to read the front page story in the Cape Times on the illegal evictions, police violence and arrests in Macassar Village and here for a video interview from the Siyanda transit camp.
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
The Elections Are Over – The War on the Poor Continues
Siyanda Eviction to Richmond Farm: 26 Families Left Homeless, Housing Misallocation and Reports of Corruption Continue
This is what development looks like from the inside...
SIYANDA – 17 March 2009 – At 5am on a rainy Tuesday, 50 Siyanda families in Siyanda Section C began to dismantle their shacks in compliance with a negotiated relocation order to the Richmond Farm transit camp. The Department of Transport and the eThekwini Municipality had sought their eviction to make way for the new MR577 freeway. People had agreed to go to new houses in the Khalula Project but then their houses were sold off corruptly. They were then told to go to the Richmond Farm Transit Camp (government shacks) with no garuantees of when, if ever, they would get houses. They refused this and rebelled. Eventually they went to court and they won in court - they won an investigation into the corruption, that various measures would be put in place to ensure judicial oversight over conditions in the camp and that no one would spend more than one year there before being given a formal house
