The Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers) Movement began in Durban, South Africa, in early 2005. The movement’s key demand is for ‘Land & Housing in the City’ but it has also successfully politicised and fought for an end to forced removals and for access to education and the provision of water, electricity, sanitation, health care and refuse removal as well as bottom up popular democracy. Their struggle has been met with often brutal state repression and criminalisation.
Better Questions
We are…outcasts in this city. O there is no conspiracy against us, no pressures are brought to bear on us, we are free to come and go, to congregate, to hatch plots even, if we wish; we are - he shrugged - free. But what does it signify, this objectless freedom? Only that we are not feared.
