S'bu Zikode
Articles by South African shack dweller and public intellectual active within Abahlali baseMjondolo, S'bu Zikode.
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.
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.
We are the Third Force - S'bu Zikode
S'bu Zikode's article in response to the attempts of the South African government to attack the shack dwellers' movement.
[b]This article was written by S'bu Zikode in 2005 at a time when the political elite was responding to the emergence of a militant shack dwellers' movement with paranoia and conspiracy theory. The main allegations was that a 'Third Force' (i.e. renegade apartheid security personnel) was 'behind' the movement.
Resisting degradations and divisions: an interview with S'bu Zikode
S’bu Zikode is the elected president of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a radical and radically democratic shackdwellers’ movement in South Africa that has committed itself to waging its struggles independently from party-political and NGO control.[1] This is an excerpt from a longer interview.
Richard Pithouse: What is your understanding of a living politics?
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.
When choices can no longer be choices - S'bu Zikode
S'bu Zikode wrote this article in early 2007 when he was finally forced out of his job at a petrol station as punishment for his political activities with Abahlali baseMjondolo. As of March 2008 he remains unemployed.
When Choices Can No Longer Be Choices
by S'bu Zikode
We are the restless majority - S'bu Zikode
S'bu Zikode's article after Abahlali baseMjondolo's successful anti-electoral campaign in 2006.
[i]This article by S'bu Zikode appeared in Durban's elite bourgeois newspaper, the Mercury, in July 2006. After Abahlali baseMjondolo put twenty thousand people on the streets in support of a boycott of the February 2006 local government elections in the face of major militarised state intimidation the middle classes began to concede some space to the voices of the militant poor.
