The Faculty of Humanities together with the Women's Academic Solidarity Association at Rhodes University hosted S'bu Zikode, president of the Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) and Shamita Naidoo, Chaiperson of the Motala Heights B Branch, who gave a seminar titled Democracy is on the Brink of Catastrophe on the recent events of their Movement and their significance for democracy in South Africa.
AbM is a shack-dwellers' movement that grew out of a road blockade in the Kennedy Road settlement in Durban in early 2005. It now has more than 10 000 paid up members in 54 settlements across KwaZulu-Natal and, also, in Cape Town. The movement campaigns for land and housing in the cities and to democratise society from below. It has actively organised against xenophobia and has recently succeeded in having the KwaZulu-Natal Slums Act declared unconstitutional in the Constitutional Court.
In the last month more than 30 of the movement's elected leaders have had their homes destroyed, 21 of its members have been arrested and many of its leaders are living in hiding. Public death threats continue to be issued against the movement's leaders. The movement insists that the attacks are backed by senior people in the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal. The ANC has denied this.
Some of Zikode’s writings criticising the South African style of democracy were included the Politics I reader at Rhodes this year. In October Rhodes students also staged a protest and released statements to demonstrate their solidarity with AbM following the arrest of some of their members in early October.
This is what Zikode had to say to Rhodes students and staff:
The road to real democracy has not been easy to those who are still searching for the truth. It is like the long road of Abahlali baseMjondolo to the Constitutional Court. Democracy means different things to different people. To some leaders democracy means that they are the only ones who must exercise authority over others. For some government officials democracy means accepting anything that is said about ordinary men and women.
With the attack on Abahlali baseMjondolo in Kennedy Road we have now seen that this technocratic thinking will be supported with violence when ordinary men and women insist on their right to speak and to be heard on the matters that concern their daily lives.
On the one side there is a consultant with a laptop. On the other side there is a drunk young man with a bush knife or a gun. As much as they might look very different they serve the same system – a system in which ordinary men and women must be good boys and girls and know that their place is not to think and speak for themselves.
It must be remembered that we have no world without families, without neighbourhoods and without nations. If democracy is to be a living force it must be a reality in the real world of our lives. Therefore there is no democracy in settlements like Kennedy Road if residents are forced to take instruction from party politicians, while those who refuse to take such instructions are attacked and killed. The attack on Abahlali in Kennedy Road was an attack on our democracy.
We must be clear that our democracy is not perfect. It is a democracy of the few, for the few and by the few – a democracy for the rich and by the rich. It is a class democracy, a democracy that criminalises our believable movement and most movements of the poor and by the poor. It is a democracy that does not only protect the interests of its champions but leaves its ordinary members to rot in jondolo (shacks), substandard housing and the life-threatening conditions that are found in places like the Kennedy Road settlement.
Our democracy has failed the poor. Therefore it is our responsibility to make it work for the poor – to turn it into a living force in the lives of the poor by building the power of the poor and reducing the power of the rich. We need to struggle to democratise all the places where we live, work, organise, study and pray. The solution to the fact that our democracy has failed the poor is not to attack democracy from above.
The attack on Abahlali members, its leaders and its offices in the Kennedy Road settlement on the 26th of September 2009 has been a wakening call that our democracy is on the brink of catastrophe. A catastrophe in which no man or woman may be able to rebuild or connect the spirit and soul of our humanity.
Abahlali have been attacked because it has organised the unorganised, it has educated the so-called uneducated, it has given voice to the voiceless. Our movement has forced the senior officials to investigate their own employees on all allegations of misallocation, mismanagement and corruption in the delivery of housing and in tender issuing processes. Abahlali have stopped most evictions in the cities where we have members by protesting and taking some municipalities and some government departments to court.
We have taken the provincial government of KwaZulu-Natal to the Constitutional Court.
Our attackers are very rich and are using the tax payer’s money to carry out the attack. They even attack from a distance so that the poor can be seen to be fighting amongst themselves. We have seen in the past how the poor have been made to turn their anger against their fellow brothers and sisters without sound and able reasons. This is catastrophic and must be stopped now.
The poor must be allowed to seriously engage on the issues that make them poor. They must be supported in all efforts and methods by which they intend to liberate themselves. Everyone has a role to play, be they rich or poor, in shaping this country in to one that immediately begins to respect and look after its poor of the poorest as we move to an end to poverty. The land and all other resources must be shared equally; the laws must apply to everyone, including those who make them. The concerns of the poor must be raised loud enough to be heard without fear or fever. The poor must be allowed to determine their own future without allowing party politics to mislead our generation.
The Constitutional Court ruling in favour of Abahlali means that a people’s democracy will not be undermined at every turn. It means that forced removal to transit camps can no longer be considered as the delivery of adequate and alternative housing as was a provision of the already buried Slums Act.
The Constitutional Court ruling also means that while party politics is trying to bring our democracy to the brink of catastrophe, the Court recognises our humanity and that the poor have the same right as everyone else to shape the future of the country.
For more information visit www.abahlali.org