On Monday, South African land and housing activists from across the country came together in a unique assembly to discuss the ongoing state violence we have been subjected to.
Urban activists are fighting a struggle for a place to call home. Yet, we have been met with violence and repression. Activists have been killed.
Members of the public joined us in Khayelitsha at the Isivivani Centre under the banner “Dying for a Home in the City”, in learning about the struggle for homes in South Africa’s three biggest cities, the challenges posed by state violence, and how we as activists can together respond to it.
Speakers included Thapelo Mohapi from Abahlali baseMjondolo (Durban), Siyabonga Mahlangu from the Inner-City Housing Federation (Johannesburg), leaders from Izwe Lethu Community (Khayelitsha) and Elizabeth Gqoboka from Reclaim the City (Sea Point).
The highlight of the mass meeting was that there are so many similarities in terms of how the state has been dealing with people who are advocating and saying they want land and want to use the land. It is more of a national crisis than it is a provincial crisis.
During a protest in Town Two, Khayelitsha, in July this year, a car pulled up next to Mthunzi "Ras" Zuma. The driver asked Ras to identify himself then shot him in the head. Ras died on the scene. His killers remain at large.
A few weeks earlier, Ras led hundreds of Izwe Lethu community members in a land occupation. Despite its prime location and size – equivalent to 16 rugby fields – the city-owned land had been vacant for decades.
Soon after Ras’s execution, the occupation was suppressed by police, and the land is once again vacant.
Zuma is not alone. Across the country, thousands of poor and working-class activists are being threatened, assaulted and in some cases murdered for challenging spatial apartheid and property power.
In Durban, Abahlali baseMjondolo has long endured state-sponsored violence, with six murders in recent years including the death of two-week old Jaden Khoza in June.
In Johannesburg, a new mayor is using a private-security force known as the Red Ants to lawlessly and violently evict hundreds of residents to make way for new, wealthier tenants.
In Cape Town, occupiers from Reclaim the City (RTC) were instructed by men with rifles and pangas to leave a vacant, government-owned inner-city building because they “don’t belong there”.
“At this point it’s very sad. We have a government and state that only responds to the needs of the people with violence. People are just asking for land; for their right to be in the city. Our comrades have died,” said Mohapi.
Activist organisation and law centre Ndifuna Ukwazi, which often supports RTC, said: “This gathering was critical to the success of the people’s fight for spatial justice. We will not back down in the struggle for what is right.”
Mandisa Dyantyi, Social Justice Coalition deputy general-secretary, said: “Everyone should have access to the city and opportunities it has to offer. People cannot lose their lives for demanding their right to a piece of land to call home. Housing activists should not be criminalised.”
Moving forward, in terms of calling for national solidarity, it’s probably going to be much easier for people who have experienced violence at the hands of the state.
This is especially the case when the state is saying that 1994 has changed things for people, but clearly not, as people are still living in harsh conditions created for them by dispossession and the apartheid system.
We will also learn what it is that we can implement across the country to make the struggle a bit more concrete, and to enable the activists to take the information back home so they can empower their communities.