There were no more than twenty of us outside South Africa House the other week. Londoners are used to small demonstrations outside foreign embassies, and passers-by didn’t pay much attention. We were there in support of the Abahlali baseMjondolo (Zulu for ‘shackdwellers’) movement. AbM was founded in Durban in 2005, after land at Kennedy Road, which the municipality had long promised would be used for housing for the poor, was sold to a developer. Echoing the language of Lefebvre, AbM call for the poor’s ‘right to the city’.
The state’s response has been unyielding. In 2007 the Kwa-Zulu Natal provincial government passed the Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act, which provided for forced evictions without a court order. AbM went to the Constitutional Court to have the law overturned. They won the case, but on 26 September 2009, shortly before the judgment was passed down, an AbM meeting in Kennedy Road was attacked by an armed gang, which AbM leaders say was connected to local ANC figures. Two people were killed. Thirteen AbM supporters were arrested, and no attackers.
read the rest here:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2013/10/18/harry-stopes/outside-south-africa-house/
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