homelessness
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles among the unemployed, unpaid workers and house workers, pensioners and welfare claimants.
AbM: Pemary Ridge Thirteen Released, Kennedy Thirteen Still in Detention
As the new wave of state repression against Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) continues the Pemar 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 the immediate release.
Grave Concerns about the Detention without Trial of the Kennedy Thirteen:
This Travesty Must End
18 November 2009
Marx House
The House in Trier, Germany that Marx was born in. Within one mile of the residence is a roman bath, a roman amphitheater, a basilica (now a church) that used to house a colossal marble head of Constantine, and a gaudy, pink, white and gilded baroque palace.
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.
