Thursday, 15 October 2009
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement
There have been five more arrests. The Kennedy Eight are now the Kennedy Thirteen.
None of the people that launched the attack on us in the Kennedy Road settlement have been arrested. Read the rest of this entry »
The hatchet job on Durban’s Kennedy Road informal settlement continued this week with an alleged “healing process” by the KwaZulu-Natal government.
Its stated purpose was to effect reconciliation in Kennedy Road, home to about 7000 people, after last week’s violence that left two confirmed deaths, displaced several hundred and destroyed the homes of Abahlali baseMjondolo (ABM) president Sbu Zikode and other ABM members, who were forced into hiding. Read the rest of this entry »
Tuesday, 06 October 2009
Press Statement by the Kennedy Road Development Committee, Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Poor People’s Alliance
Our Movement is under Attack
We are under attack. We have been attacked physically with all kinds of weapons – guns and knives, even a sword. We have been driven from our homes and our community. The police did nothing to stop the attacks on us despite our calls for help. Four people were killed. The attacks, which began on the night of Saturday 26 September, were carried out by local ANC members together with shebeen owners from the Kennedy Road settlement. They were saying that our movement was ‘selling them’ to the AmaMpondo. It is a fact that our movement, at the local branch level and at the movement level, has no concern for where people were born or where their ancestors were born. We are a movement of the poor and that means that we do not make divisions between the poor. We have always been clear about this. This is our politics and we will stick to it. Read the rest of this entry »
06 October 2008 – The Sowetan
BOLEKAJA! – Andile Mngxitama
“THE ANC has invaded Kennedy Road. We have been arrested, beaten, killed, jailed and made homeless by their armed wing.” Read the rest of this entry »
October 02, 2009 Edition 1
NTOKOZO MFUSI – The Mercury
NEARLY 100 residents of the Kennedy Road informal settlement in Sydenham, Durban, have been displaced after a mob attack which occurred on Saturday night. Read the rest of this entry »
Published: 2009/10/02 07:32:38 AM – Business Day
You report on the attack on the Kennedy Road settlement (Fund set up after Durban attack, September 30). The scale and seriousness of this attack have not been fully realised. It used ethnicity as the basis for displacing (maybe 1000) residents using threats, theft and physical attacks. Read the rest of this entry »
New video has been put together from the scene at Kennedy Road. Eyewitnesses to the menacing mob on Saturday night directly contradict both the official ANC story that ‘Abahlali-connected people’ perpetrated the attack and the ridiculous comment by Ward Councilor Yakoob Baig that the community is ‘terrified of Abahlali’. The slightest scrutiny reveals that in fact Abahlali was the target of the vicious 36 hours plus of deadly mob violence. In the 3 days since at least 4 people have been killed, many injured and over 1,000 have been displaced from the settlement under threats of violence. Their safe return has no secure guarantee and has not even been addressed by the ANC or police. The ANC’s persistent support and connection to the actual attackers proves that the government is at a minimum complicit in the violence. At the moment no member of the armed mob these witnesses were threatened by has been arrested while 8 unarmed members of the Kennedy Road safety committee, which was protecting Abahlali members that night, are in police custody facing possible murder charges. Abahlali President S’bu Zikode and Vice President Lindela Figlan remain refugees, unable to return to their homes at Kennedy Road while the armed mob holding death threats over their heads roams free to terrorize the remaining residents at the settlement. In fact anyone with even the most cursory connection to Abahlali, for example the ladies who cook for children in the crèche near the Abahlali office are being threatened and forced to leave. Please watch this video as it is an important counter to the blatant lies being peddled by the ANC and swallowed whole by much of the South African media. You can watch on YouTube here.
Click here to sign the petition asking Zuma to intervene and stop the violence
29 September 2009
Mary Papayya – Sowetan
Homeless leaders’ homes destroyed
TWO people were killed and shack dwellers have been forced to flee their homes after a mob of 40 men armed with knobkerries, spears and guns attacked homes in the Kennedy Road shack settlement in Durban. Read the rest of this entry »
Democracy Under Attack in Kennedy Road
I was torn with anguish when I first heard of the unspeakable brutality that has raged down on to the Kennedy Road shack settlement. In recent years I have spent many hours in the Kennedy Road settlement. I’ve attended meetings, memorials, mass ecumenical prayers and marches. I have had the honour of meeting some truly remarkable people in the settlement and the work of Abahlali baseMjondolo has always nurtured my faith in the power and dignity of ordinary people. I have seen the best of our democracy here. I have tasted the joy of real social hope here.
Read the rest of this entry »
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