What is the motivation behind Abahlali baseMjondolo?
Abahlali baseMjondolo, which means the residents of the shacks, is a social movement formed in 2005. Our aim is to fight for, promote, advance and protect the interests of the poor, particularly those living in shack settlements. We fight for land, decent housing and human dignity. We believe that a human being should be treated as a human being, regardless of their social and economic status, the language they speak, their race or where they are coming from. All of us should live in peace and harmony – that is what we believe in.
Can you describe what people you’re fighting to protect have been facing?
Our movement has been protecting people from illegal evictions carried out by the government and private landowners, that sometimes take place at a gunpoint. In Durban there is a body called the Anti-Land Invasion Unit (AIU) under the control of the African National Congress (ANC, the ruling party, Ed.) municipal government, that illegally and unlawfully removes people from their homes. Cape Town’s law enforcement uses the AIU, and in Johannesburg they use the Red Ants, a private security hired by the municipality of Johannesburg.
People who are attacked are mainly poor people living in shacks. They don’t have access to proper water and sanitation. There are many diseases in communities, and they are also vulnerable to floods and fire. When one shack catches fire, the entire community is gutted. During the night women are sexually harassed on their way to something as basic as toilets. More than 300 households use one standpipe of water – in post-apartheid South Africa, in a free democratic South Africa, people still struggle to get better services. And these services have not been provided because of corruption that is taking place.
Political parties blame migrant workers who came to South Africa “unlawfully” as the reason why people do not have access to better accommodation. Meanwhile, more than a trillion rand has disappeared from the state’s institutions due to massive corruption, which is the real reason why poor people lack access to basic services such as water. And when we speak about these issues, when we uncover corruption and speak about the rights of the poorest of the poor, we are either faced with repression and attacks or killed.
Where does the government expect the poor people, who seem to be in their way, to go?
We believe that everyone must have access to the benefits of the country’s economy. People are moving into the cities because the government is not providing any form of income or budgets for rural areas. There is deep poverty and a high unemployment rate in rural areas, no opportunities, universities are in the cities, and so on. So, people are bound to move into the cities. When they do that, they don’t have a place to stay, and they build shacks – that is a way for them to be in the cities.
I never thought that the ANC government would not understand this, because they lived with us at some point. When we voted for liberation, we never thought the ANC would do what the apartheid government did to us. The apartheid government pushed the black people away from the cities. If you wanted to be in a city during the apartheid, you had to prove that you were working for a white person. Today, everyone is welcome to come to the cities – but only if you have money.
We do not count in the eyes of the government; they see us as a human waste that is supposed to be put in human dumping areas. We don’t belong in the cities – the cities are for the “clean” and the rich.
What does the South African law say about the situation of the poor and the evictions?
Abahlali baseMjondolo has taken the ANC government to courts many times, and we won in all cases of evictions, because these evictions are unlawful and brutal. In terms of the South African law, you cannot evict anyone and render them homeless, until you have approached a court for an eviction order. But the ANC does not do that, because they believe that they cannot be told by a court how to govern, so they govern as they wish and evict people as they wish, unlawfully – that was proven every time we went to court.
Would you say that the divide that was based on racism in apartheid, is now based on class?
South Africans fought against apartheid, an evil system that segregated the country, segregated black people who were marginalized and pushed away. However, although apartheid was defeated by ordinary people organised into trade unions and the United Democratic Front,
real democracy was not gained by the majority. There were a few people who saw the opportunity to loot the state. The democracy we were supposed to gain, was robbed by people whose interest is to enrich themselves and their families, and who do not care about anyone else.
Most of the government and the police today are blacks, and they are now oppressing the poor blacks. They are allowing multinational companies to come and take our resources and kill people who are fighting against that. That’s the South Africa that we have today. On Freedom Day on the 27th of April, we say it’s un-freedom for us and we get together and mourn the fact that we should have had freedom, but it was stolen from us by the corrupt people, politicians and their aides.
Racism remains an issue, of course. But the black elites often misused this reality to distract attention from their corruption, abandonment of the poor and repression of popular organisations. As the philosopher Frantz Fanon showed, we must oppose white racism and the betrayal of former liberation movements.
How have AbahlalibaseMjondolo and its activists directly suffered?
As of today, we have lost 25 of our activists. Some have been lost at the hands of the police and the Anti-land Invasion Unit. There are also politicians who hire hitmen to remove activists. People have been killed during our struggle since 2009, and it has only gotten worse since 2013 when the assassinations started. In 2022 alone we lost four activists. One was shot by masked police who came to one of our communities and opened fire. Three activists were killed by hired hitmen.
One of the victims was Nokuthula Mabaso, a brave woman responsible for the communal soup kitchen in her community that made sure no one in the community went to sleep hungry, especially during the Covid 19 lockdown, when many people could not go to work and were not paid. They had a communal vegetable garden and a communal chicken farm, and these projects helped to sustain the kitchen. To this day, this kitchen still exists and provides the necessary food and security for the community. But ANC linked people who want this land for their benefit, to build flats to be sold to individuals, they feel that projects like these are standing in their way. They are the ones who hire hitmen. They killed Nokuthula Mabaso in May 2022 in a brutal way. In August 2022, the chairperson of this commune, Lindokuhle Mnguni, was also killed.
And it is not us alone – many activists from other organisations can’t walk freely because they might face an assassination attempt. These are the challenges that grassroots community organisations and social movements are facing in South Africa.
You lead a movement with more than 150 000 people who are not accepting this horrible situation. What do you see could be changed, and in what way?
When people come to our offices, we tell them to organize with others in their communities. If you come as an individual, we tell you that your problem is not only yours, but also a problem of the society – there must be other people in your community who are facing the same issues. When they come together, we come to them and teach them about building popular democratic power.
Secondly, we ask people to use their own power. Our slogan is: “We don’t struggle for you; we struggle with you.” We say to people who come to us to go and protest to show that they are not happy. If that fails, we go and use the media as a tool to expose the government. If that fails, our last resort is to go to court, where we have never lost, and that shows us that the ANC has always been wrong in evicting people.
We have managed to save many homes, and many people today have a place to live because they’ve joined our movement. For me that’s the hope for the future, popular organisations where people come together, talk about their problems and find solutions.
How can Norwegian civil society support Abahlali baseMjondolo?
As much as people want to hear that South Africa is free, poor people there are not free. Impoverishment, repression and all kinds of human rights violations are a huge problem. We want people in Norway to raise their voice and urge the government of Norway to hold the South African authorities to account. When they meet with them and the South African authorities speak good about their country, ask them about the killed activists.
We want support from the Norwegian government in bringing justice for our movement and other activists, human rights defenders and corruption whistleblowers who suffered. The perpetrators responsible for killing of our members must be arrested. We’ve only received justice in three of the 25 cases, and all who were arrested were members of the ANC, some even senior members. Two former ANC councillors are now serving life imprisonment for the murder of one of our leaders. If the other cases were also investigated thoroughly, there would be high-profile members of the ANC implicated, which is why the investigations are not taking place. They don’t want to uncover their own people.
Anything else that you want to share with us?
We feel the pain of the people of Palestine, the brutality that they are receiving from the government of Israel daily, and we keep them in our hearts. When we say that we want a free Palestine, we mean a free and independent Palestine, not one that will be controlled by Israel. We mean one person - one vote, in a unitary state with equal rights for all, as in South Africa after apartheid.
What is happening in Palestine is apartheid. We see from afar what they are going through and we understand – the division, and the killing of ordinary people because they have a different origin to yours and you feel superior to them, so you feel you can stamp on their rights and do whatever you want. As Nelson Mandela was said, “But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the liberation of the Palestinians”.
I am glad that my country has taken the position to support the people of Palestine who are suffering. And we ask our government, can you apply the same principles at home?