Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Abahlali Base Mjondolo

That's Zulu for shack dwellers. News24 reports on a true indigenous squatter uprising in South Africa, led by S'bu Zikode, a 30-year-old gas station attendant and father of four from Durban. "The ANC must use the power that we gave them to deliver," Zikode told News24.

This is exactly what squatters need: a pressure group. This guy's even been on TV in a debate with a government minister. Here's his group's slogan: "No Land, No Home, No Vote."

Onward!

(Here, courtesy of the hope for south africa blog, is S'bu Zikode's blast from the Nov. 9th Star newspaper.)

2 comments:

rn said...

Many thanks, Lisa, for the kind words.

Anonymous said...

I'm going to South Africa the first two weeks of april, to visit game farms with my son and to report for swiss newspapers. This post on SA is really the stuff I was looking for in my preparation for my visit and articles. I will be reporting and writing on
1. the SA government's difficulty to deliver livelihoods, clean water, electricity, schooling (etc).
2. the sedentarisation of the last bushmen, mostly in Botswana
If anyone reading this has useful contacts of people, places, organisations, websites etc that could be of use, thanks for telling me:
Philippe, Geneva
phr2@yahoo.com
RN: Thanks for your blog talking about the real world