burning with indignation

The horrific death of 70 year old Zithulele Dhlomo, who had resided in the Kennedy Road squatter settlement in Durban for two decades before being incinerated in a shack fire last weekend, has moved his neighbors to action The Centre for Civil Society reports. Community residents joined famed poet Dennis Brutus and other religious and civic notables to demand city services and housing rights.

As one squatter said, "Better to lock us up in jail – in jail there is light, in jail there is water, in jail there is a toilet."

Squatters say that the municipality stopped providing electricity to the shack communities and thus people are forced to use candles, which often cause shack fires. They are demanding services from the eThekwini municipality.

This is the way good can arise from the ashes of tragedy: through organizing.