Abahlali week 2 (part 2)

On Sunday evening of last week, the members of Ablahlali met the delegates returning from Jo'burg, with a mini-feast of snacks and soda, and lots of singing. I have yet to hear what all went down at the conference over the weekend, but apparently there were some new bonds formed between Abahlali and the Anti-Eviction Campaign in Capetown, and many shouts of "Comrade, you are out of order!", perhaps from conference moderators not keen on being as democratic as people wanted. I'll write more when I know.

What I can write though, is that this evening has become another turning point in the movement. Abahlali was preparing for a meeting with the mayor the following day (Monday), but when the group called his scheduler to confirm, no meeting was on his agenda.

"You can bring a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink," a favorite phrase of S'bu's, as he spoke on speakerphone to the mayor's aide. Around the table, on people's faces, disappointment and anger.

One by one, people spoke of next steps, even though they had yet to rest and reflect and talk about the weekend. Many hadn't seen family for days.

Escalating the fight back to the streets. Sit ins at the mayor's office. Huge presents delivered to Mayor Mlaba's office--a nicely wrapped, fully used port-a-john with a big bow, with the familiar stench settlement residents have to deal with every day. A Press Conference at Kennedy Road.

With cell phones ringing, plans to get the press out to the settlement in the next days to announce a new campaign of nonviolent resistance were underway. The message: "No Land, No Housing, No Vote."

This no vote plan has been a key piece of the organizing since marches on Kennedy Road's councilor, Yacoob Baig, and the mayor began. Local elections are scheduled for March, and Abahlali is committed to a boycott. Why? They have been wholehearted supporters of the ANC since it's rise to power. 11 years since the fall of apartheid, and the poor still wait to be heard.

If politics, S'bu and many others say, is about lies and beating around the bush, then they won't be willing participants anymore. Their focus is building a new people's politics.


(photo from the November protest at Foreman Road, taken by David Christoffer Lier)

Article about the protest

Abahlali Base Mjondolo at Kennedy Road (part 1)

yikes! already weeks 1 and 2, come and gone. here are the highlights from the first week, and then i'll follow up with another post tomorrow hopefully.

Time moves so very differently here, much more slowly. It feels like i've been here much longer than 14 days. Maybe it has to do with the heat, or the fact that I don't have a watch. Or, maybe that because of the time change, my internal clock for some reason has set to wake up every day at 7:30 am.

I'm settling in to life here, slowly. I've decided to stay at the backpackers for the time being, i've moved to a quiet little room in half a cottage out back, away from the continuous radio near the dorm rooms, that plays awful covers of American pop songs or Christmas tunes.

I met with a "comrade" from the Centre for Civil Society, a smart, soft-spoken PhD student who's been spending a lot of time with the members of the shackdwellers movement, or Abahlali Base Mjondolo, in Durban.

There are around 25 informal settlements of shackdwellers around the city. Kennedy Road, maybe a 10 minute drive from where I am staying, is just downwind from the huge municipal dump, on a hill overlooking the city centre and the ocean beyond. It's a 30 year old settlement, with about 6,000 people in 2,400 shacks, and only 2 toilets. TWO. And only 6 water faucets.
For 6,000 people.

Right before the end of apartheid, my friend tells me, as we arrive for an organizing meeting at Foreman Road, some sort of urban development foundation (i've forgotten the name) built community centers in some of these settlements, with the hope that this would allow a space for community members to become entrepreneurs and sell things, to better their lives.

I'm not sure about follow up, any training, but basically making money informally means heading down to the crowded city centre, maybe a square mile of downtown Durban filled with small storefronts and hundreds of people selling their wares--everything from clothing to food to music to cell phones-- along the sidewalks. Transport to and from is at least 4 rand (about $.60), which, for poor people, is a lot to sacrifice each day, when a tomato is 1 rand, and a kilo of maize meal, the staple food, around 10.

But, most of these settlements don't have a center, don't have any access to electricity. This has led to numerous shack fires, like the one that recently killed one-year-old Mhlengi Khumalo. Luckily, here at Kennedy road there's enough electricity to power the building, which houses a day care center and an office, where Abahlali representatives usually meet on Sundays.

The organizing meeting I attended that evening was preparation for a weekend meeting in Johannesburg of the Social Movement Indaba (SMI), a coalition of poor people's struggles around the country, which started a few years back when a march was organized to protest the World Summit on Sustainable Development being held in the Jo'burg suburb of Sandton. Most NGOs who work on development issues in the country took part in the Summit, so the SMI decided it needed to publicize the slow movement or entire lack of services making it to the people who needed it the most.

Since then, there have been annual conferences of the SMI, held usually in Joburg, and run by an elite few. This was the first time Abahlali base Mjondolo had been invited, due a lot to massive protests they organized in the past year against their city ward councillors and the mayor of Durban, who have broken promises to get badly needed basic services to the settlements-- more toilets, water access, electricity, refuse pickup (there is none even though some houses are 5 meters from the fence encircling the dump next door), and most importantly, better housing.

I've been told that Abahlali is a totally democratic group, that all the people that sit on their congress are elected every year. Most decisions aren't made until people discuss it with everyone else, and there's a sort of mass consensus process.

It's quite a gift to sit in on their meeting. About 20 people crammed in to this small office space, dedicated to hearing each other out, all speaking with so much heart and passion about their lives, their rights and their vision. S'bu Zikode, the elected chair [see his article below or here], facilitates and translates tonight, an incredibly eloquent, understated, dedicated, patient and witty leader of this group.

Based upon knowledge of past SMIs, they spend time talking about how best to keep the basic issues on the table, and to prevent discussion in convoluted language. They all agree to be the person to stand up and shout, "I'm sorry could you say that in poor people's language" or "could you please translate in Zulu, Xhosa, etc."

It's only day 7 here, and already I feel inspired and humbled to have been allowed to sit and observe this great collective process with some truly inspiring and giving people, all living without real walls or roofs, with extended family, with kids that play in the sewage that drains past their houses down the hills. There is so much yet to see, but I'm already angered by the severe injustices all around me here. And propelled by the spirits of new friends.