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On Sunday the 18th of November 120 people, mainly women, participated in
the launch of the new Abahlali baseMjondolo(AbM) branch in KwaNdengezi. On
Sunday the 25th of November we launched another new AbM branch in the Uganda
settlement in Isipingo. We currently have 64 branches, 55 in KwaZulu-Natal and
9 in the Western Cape.

KwaNdengezi People started joining AbM in KwaNdengezi in early June. One of the
community members had been following the Shallcross occupation and approached AbM
for solidarity with their own struggle. The problem that the people are
facing in KwaNdengezi is that there is a housing project there. No one in the
community had been informed about this project. This is a rural area and people
live in their own houses and not in shacks. They have an iNkosi and iziNduna.
Land is allocated by the iziNduna and is not paid for. Some people have Right to
Occupy papers and other people don’t have papers. But the right to occupy
the land is recognised by all the neighbours and is therefore a real and
strong right. After 1994 the land was taken over by the Municipality and the
legal authority was shifted from the iNkosi to a councillor.

When this housing project started RDP houses were just built anywhere and
without any discussion or consultation. Some people found that two or
three houses were suddenly being built in their yards. Fences were just
destroyed and houses were built on their gardens and even next to or over their
family graves. There has been no respect for the dead and African people have a
high respect for the dead. This is an insult to the people and to their
culture. Also the houses are not being built for the people in the area. They are
going to people unknown in the area and people strongly believe that the
councillor is selling them as so often happens in Durban. When people complained
about these houses being built in their yards and on their gardens and graves
they were told that their houses were shacks and that therefore they have no
ownership or say – no rights at all. However their houses are not shacks.
They were built on properly allocated land and are solid structures having as
many as five rooms in some cases.

There has been no consultation about any of this and the Community Liaison
Officer has only been appointed because she is on the Branch Executive
Committee of the local ANC. People are bought at night to the new homes
and it is known that anyone who questions the project or the allocation of the
houses risks being killed. Everyone knows that there is a very bad record of the
eThekwini Municipality allowing councillors to do business with the city
and it is rumoured in KwaNdengezi that the councillor has tenders related to
this housing project and that he is selling the houses too. One thing that is
for sure is that the councillor, Mduduzi Christian Ngcobo, has suddenly grown
very rich.

On the 31st of August a protest was organised against Ngcobo, the
councillor for Ward 12. The memorandum was received by Desmond Myeza, the manager in
office of Logie Naidoo, the Speaker in the eThekwini Municipality. Naidoo
was given seven days to respond but there was no response at all. The complete
silence of the municipality on this matter has made people to believe
that the rumours about corruption must be true.

By the middle of October the community was furious at the failure of the
Speaker’s Office to reply to their memorandum and so they organised a road
blockade on the 22nd of October. Ngcobo came to the blockade with the
police. He was armed and he joined the police assault of the protestors. Thuli
Ndlovu, who was then the interim chairperson of AbM in the area, was singled out
for deliberate personal intimidation and assault.

That night Ngcobo arrived at Thuli’s home and started shouting threats and
shooting a gun outside her house. She and her family did not sleep that
night. The interim committee has opened a case of intimidation against Ngcobo
with the local police. They know that of course that a case against a
councillor will never be investigated but they wanted it to be on the record.

On the 23rd of October Thuli and other comrades from KwaNdengezi joined
the Rural Network protest in Pietermaritzburg together with other comrades
from our movement and the Unemployed People’s Movement.

Before the launch of the KwaNdengezi branch on the 18th of November there
were several meetings. At the first meeting AbM was invited to present the
movement and to explain ubuhlali. At the second meeting an interim committee was
elected to work towards the launch – to explain the movement’s politics
and to mobilise and recruit. The third meeting was supposed to be the launch. It
was scheduled for ten. When the AbM leadership arrived the hall was still being
used for a church service. But when the church service was over the
councillor arrived at the hall in his Nevara 4X4, entered the hall with two people
and sat in the front. Both of these people were from the BEC of the local ANC
andone, Nonhlanhla, is also the Community Liaison Officer for the housing
project in the area. The hall then filled up with people expecting to attend an
AbM launch. However the councillor started addressing the people saying that
they were here to talk about crime and to launch a Community Policing Forum
(CPF). He was armed and was very intimidating and threatening. He had armed men
moving in and out of the hall too.

However Mr.Mbanjwa, an AbM member from KwaNdengezi, bravely told the
councillor that people had come to the hall for an AbM meeting. People
started clapping. The councillor tried to ignore what was said but as people
became more noisy he started talking about ‘strange faces’. He said that he had
not been informed of a meeting in his area and that he has to be informed of
all meetings in his area and that no meeting can go ahead without his
permission.

He also said that as AbM are poor it is clear that the movement is coming
to the area to steal people’s houses and that the people of KwaNdengezi need
to organise themselves against criminals that want to steal their homes.
There were no police officers present and so this was clearly not a legitimate
CPF  meeting. Some people wondered if Ngcobo wasn’t trying to create his own
militia to protect himself against the people that he is supposed to be
representing.

Thuli approached the councillor saying that the people wanted to start
their meeting. However he refused to stop talking or to allow the meeting to go
ahead. As he was armed and threatening the AbM leadership left. This
reminded the movement of what happened at eShowe.

Other attempts were made to hold AbM meetings in the community hall but
Ngcobo, the councillor, would always lock the hall when he heard that AbM
were coming. Meetings had to be held outside. The interim AbM committee in the
area went to the Municipality to request access to the hall and were told that
they had a right to use the hall. The officials said that it was a community
hall and that they couldn’t be refused access and that they don’t need to pay
to use the hall. They went to the police and reported that they were
planning to use the hall and that the councillor had no right to deny them access.

However on the day of the launch the councillor locked the hall and
refused AbM access. However the interim committee had organised a big tent and
chairs in case they were denied access to the hall and the launch went ahead in
the tent. All the while the councillor was driving around. He was accompanied
by armed men. The police were with him too. But there were too many people
and so he couldn’t break up the meeting.

The new AbM branch in KwaNdengezi has the following immediate aims:

1.    To stop the project.
2.    To force the City to be fully transparent on everything that they have
already decided and done (budget, plans, project beneficiaries etc) and to
renegotiate the project in a way that respects the rights of the people
already living in the area.
3.    To ensure that there is a credible investigation into all the
allegations of corruption and intimidation against the councillor.

In order to achieve these goals they will continue with mobilisation and
also look at getting a court interdict to stop the project.

Warlordism and violence have become the order of the day in Durban and in
KwaZulu-Natal. We are wondering why people like Nigel Gumede are sitting
back. Do they have something to hide? Are they also benefiting from this
project?

Uganda in Isipingo

On Sunday, 25 November 2012 we launched another branch in Ward 89 at
Uganda near Isipingo. The problems are the same. Here too when people are
supposed to be enjoying and happy when a housing project comes they find that instead
they are angry and disappointed. Here people were removed from their shacks
and put into transit camps. This community was promised verbally that both those
who still live in shacks and those who were relocated to transit camps were
going to benefit in this housing project. However as the homes are finished
people from outside the area are being put into these houses and the local
residents remain in the transit camps. Once again there is no consultation or
discussion and there is no allocation policy that is transparent. Twenty one families
unknown to the community have been given these homes so far and it is
strongly alleged in the community that these homes are being sold. All our efforts
to report these injustices have fallen into deaf ears.