homelessness
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles among the unemployed, unpaid workers and house workers, pensioners and welfare claimants.
Sekwanele! Social movement struggles for land and housing in post-apartheid South Africa
This article, published in the current issue of Left Turn magazine in the USA, gives a useful overview of the militant grassroots movements in South Africa.
Sekwanele! [Enough is Enough!]: Social Movement Struggles for Land and Housing in Post-Apartheid South Africa
By Toussaint Losier
Amabhulu anyama
Asenzeli iworry
[The black capitalists]
[Are making us worry]
- Chorus of a contemporary protest song, sung in Xhosa
What recession means for us
An analysis of the likely impact of the coming recession on workers' lives and a rallying call for collective action to mitigate that impact.
The recession is here. We're told to tighten our belts and brace ourselves for redundancies, wage and service cuts. Politicians and business leaders are united in saying we should pay for a crisis not of our making [see box for a brief history of the crisis]. A recession is simply when the economy shrinks for 6 months in a row.
Thousands to march against eviction for a massive themepark in South Africa
Fifty thousand people are threatened by an eviction to build a Zulu themepark with Dubai money.
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
eMacambini Anti-Removal Committee Press Statement
Ten Thousand to March on S’bu Ndebele in Protest at eMacambini Evictions
Date: Wednesday 26 November 2008
Time: 10:00
Route: From Isithebe airstrip to the Mandeni Municipal Offices
'Be a visitor, not a spy' - QQ Section, Site B, Khayelitsha
.jpg "Khayelitsha Township - Cape Town, SA")
Matt Birkinshaw, a London anarchist, gives an account of his visit to the QQ shack settlement in Cape Town in diary form. QQ has recently joined the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement that began in Durban but now has a national presence.
'Be a visitor, not a spy' - QQ Section, Site B, Khayelitsha
Matt Birkinshaw, October 2008
Introduction
Shack Fire Summit, Kennedy Road settlement, 22 September 2008
A statement by the Poor People's Alliance following the shack fire summit called by Abahlali baseMjondolo
Wednesday, 08 October 2008
Abahlali baseMjondolo (KwaZulu-Natal & Western Cape)
Landless Peoples' Movement (KwaZulu-Natal & Gauteng)
Rural Network (KwaZulu-Natal)
Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (Western Cape)
South African National Civics Organisations (eThekwini region)
The London Coalition Against Poverty
This article originally appeared in Direct Action No. 42, Spring 2008, the magazine of the Solidarity Federation, the British section of the International Workers Association. It looks at the formation and practice of the London Coalition Against Poverty.
One of the most exciting developments in London over the last year is the formation of the London Coalition Against Poverty. LCAP is inspired by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty in Canada, who have created a successful and empowering model of grassroots community organising over the last two decades.
Two-thirds of Glasgow Housing Association will remain in a "rump GHA"
It now appears some two-thirds of Glasgow tenants - in 46,272 of its current 69,395 houses - will remain in a "rump GHA".
The details are:
* 3% (=2,097) of Glasgow Housing Association houses are up for ballot (November 2008) on second stage transfer to a community based housing association.
* 30% (=20,985) of GHA houses are in Local Housing Organisations that are still progressing (at a snails pace) through the various stages of the GHA's processes towards potential second stage transfer someday.
Land and housing - S'bu Zikode
Text of a speech by S'bu Zikode at the Diakonia Council of Churches Economic Justice Forum in Durban on 28 August 2008 addressing the housing situation in Durban, calling for a new kind of grassroots and radically democratic communist project, and ends with a proposal for ten demands around which a united front for a democratic and just city can be built.
Land and Housing
Thursday 28 August, 2008
I have been asked to speak on the burning issues of land and housing. I only get these invitations because of the strength of the movement of which I am part and so, on behalf of Abahlali baseMjondolo, I thank Diakonia for this platform.
Politics at stake: a note on stakeholder analysis
In what Partha Chatterjee calls 'most of the world' the state and capital have two defences against grassroots political society - the police and civil society (especially NGOs and the academy). The first protect oppression with violent repression, the second does the same by throwing up a spongy wall around it in which grassroots political society is absorbed via individualising technocratic 'public participation' processes and educated to accept domination via all kinds of workshops and training that teach people to know their place. This article is an important attempt to think with grassroots militancy against civil society.
Mark Butler and David Ntseng, July 2008
Resistance from the other South Africa
Neha Nimmagudda, a student from NYC, spent a few months working as a full time volunteer with the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement in South Africa. In this essay she reflects one of the movement's quarterly all night meetings in which critical issues are discussed.
The topic of this particular meeting was 'leadership'. While Abahlali has never stated that it is an anarchist movement many have drawn parallels between 'Abahlalism' and 'anarchism'. Certainly the movement considers both the state and the vanguardist left to be oppressors.
Neha Nimmagudda (2008-07-17)
