Abahlali baseMjondolo
Articles by Abahlali baseMjondolo, a South African shack dwellers' movement in Durban with staunch belief in anti-electoral, grassroots confrontational politics.
AbM: Pemary Ridge Thirteen Released, Kennedy Thirteen Still in Detention
As the new wave of state repression against Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) continues the Pemary Ridge Thirteen have been released but the Kennedy Road Thirteen remain in the notorious Westville prison. Bishop Rubin Phillip, who was Steve Biko's Deputy in the South African Student's Organisation in 1969, has called for their immediate release.
Grave Concerns about the Detention without Trial of the Kennedy Thirteen:
This Travesty Must End
18 November 2009
Party Politic Vs Living Politic in Kennedy Road
This lecture critiques devastating role of party politics in society which divides and control people. It argues for living politics which unites people, particularly the poor.
The living politics is for all people. It does not impose ideas instead it emerges from people. It places the people at the centre of their struggle in order to realise their freedom. The living politics is the politics for freedom.
Statement in support of Abahlali baseMjondolo
Statement by Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek and others in support of Abahlali baseMjondolo
9 October 2009
Living Learning
An introduction to the new Abahlali baseMjondolo, a South African shackdwellers movement launched in Pinetown (near Durban) at an event attended by hundreds of people, two days before the ANC militia attacked Kennedy Road.
Out of Order: A living learning for a living politics
We are poor, not stupid.
- Ashraf Casiem1
The oppressed have been…reduced…to things. In order to regain their humanity they must cease to be things and fight as men and women. This is a radical requirement. They cannot enter the struggle as objects in order later to become human beings.
- Paulo Freire2
The ANC Has Invaded Kennedy Road
S'bu Zikode's first hurried notes on the ANC atrocities in the Kennedy Road settlement.
The ANC has invaded Kennedy Road. We have been arrested, beaten, killed, jailed and made homeless by their armed wing. This is what it took for Yakoob Baig and Jackson Gumede to finally take back the settlement.
This was a very well organised crime. It is not just an attack on the KRDC. It is not just an attack on AbM. It is an attack on our politic.
Bishops speaks out on the attacks on Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban
The Anglican Bishop of South Africa has issued a statement on the attacks on Abahlali baseMjondolo
Democracy Under Attack in Kennedy Road
Housing activists murdered in Durban
Activists in the South African shack dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo have been attacked in Durban, leaving several dead.
Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC)
Emergency Press Release, Sunday 27 September 2009
Abahlali baseMjondolo Attacked in Kennedy Road – People Have Been Killed
Last night at about 11:30 a group of about 40 heavily armed men attacked the Abahlali baseMjondolo office in the Kennedy Road settlement where the movement was holding an all night camp for the Youth League.
Cape Town housing activist's trial begins
Mzonke Poni, Chairperson of Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape, is scheduled to stand trial on the charge of public violence on Tuesday 29 September 2009.
The charge relates to a protest organised in opposition to state criminality against the Macassar Village Land Occupation. He has written this essay on 'public violence' in response to the charges levelled against him.
Public Violence
by Mzonke Poni, Chairperson of Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape
Simon Saunders Interviews Abahlali baseMjondolo in London
Interview with a South African housing activist about recent struggles in Durban.
Many activists in South Africa's largest shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) have been fighting over the issue of housing rights for 15 years now.
After the fall of apartheid in 1994, the new ANC government wrote into the constitution that the shack dwellers, living four or five to a room in hovels at the centre of South Africa's wealthiest cities, should have homes.
Zabalaza, Unfinished Struggles against Apartheid: The Shackdwellers’ Movement in Durban
This article by Nigel Gibson gives an overview of the emergence of Abahlali baseMjondolo in 2005. Much has changed since then - the movement has grown enormously and the early ambivalence about the ANC on the part of some militants was decisively broken in 2006 - but this is a classic account of the early days of the movement.
By Nigel C. Gibson in Socialism and Democracy
Talk to us … not about us.
-- Abahlali T Shirt
If as a theoretician, one’s ears are attuned to new impulses from the workers, new “categories” will be created, a new way of thinking, a step forward in philosophic cognition.
-- Raya Dunayevskaya, Marxism and Freedom
“We are on our own”: The Birth of a New Movement
