1. NGOs slam organisation for disrupting ordinary life in Khayelitsha, Cape Town
12 October 2010

Joint statement from COSATU Khayelitsha, Treatment Action Campaign, Social Justice Coalition and Equal Education:

Unite Poor and Working Class People in Khayelitsha through Disciplined and Sustained Organising!

Reject Abahlali baseMjondolo's call for violence and chaos!

1. The need for mass organisation to overcome social inequality has never been greater.

2. In 1994 African and Coloured poor and working-class townships and rural areas celebrated freedom from White rule. The hope that hunger, unemployment, the bucket toilet system, apartheid education and homelessness would be addressed as a permanent priority of government lived in people's hearts. It was hoped that health services would be improved and income inequality reduced.

3. We know that freedom has brought many improvements. Millions of people gained access to welfare grants, water, homes and clinics. We can march peacefully to our elected Parliament without being shot. We can join unions and organisations. We can go to the courts against evictions and for HIV treatment. These are some of the great gains that we must defend and advance. But the government has not made the needs of urban and rural working-class and poor people its priority.

4. Twenty years after the release of President Mandela and his comrades, and the unbanning of the ANC, and sixteen years after political freedom, income inequality is worse than ever before. More people than ever have no jobs, the indignity of the bucket system and toilets in the bushes continues, and education inequality and ill-health remain a part of the system of government and South African capitalism. As a result our sons and daughters turn to alcoholism, drugs and crime. They terrorise their families, neighbours and communities.

5. Meanwhile black and white capitalists, ex-homeland bureaucrats and other elements of a predatory elite are using the ANC to take the wealth of the country for themselves and keep it from poor and working-class communities. At local, provincial and national level, government protects and promotes corrupt, lazy and incompetent 'managers'. The bosses have the greatest freedom capitalists have ever had in South Africa and pay the lowest taxes.

6. People are angry across our country and in every community. Anger is justified because government is abusing our trust and vote. Many people say: 'Life cannot continue in this way.' Others take to the streets in protest that sometimes turns violent. We know that mindless violence and chaos have never brought freedom, decent jobs and a better life. Freedom and social equality comes through patient organisation, education and sustained struggle. It comes through building the collective power of communities.

7. The struggle for social equality and justice requires serious organisation and a clear programme for change. It requires collective leadership with the understanding required to lead millions of people over years, not a few hundred who throw stones for a few days and become cannon-fodder for self-appointed leaders.

8. Most people in Khayelitsha do not have decent jobs. Almost half are unemployed or are in casualised and badly paid domestic, shop and service work. In Khayelitsha there is a small middle-class comprising teachers, book-keepers and nurses most of whom support large unemployed families. The majority of people in Khayelitsha are supported by these remittances, welfare grants and informal sector work such as taverns, fruit stalls and spazas. Almost everyone in Khayelitsha relies on taxis, buses and trains.

9. A few weeks ago Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape, supported by some elements of the ANC Youth League and other community organisations, called for a 'general-strike of informal settlements' to bring production in factories and shops to a standstill. They proposed to make the City 'ungovernable' and cause 'chaos throughout the City'.

They openly encouraged residents to burn tyres, block roads and throw stones and rubbish. This call is immature, ignorant and shows contempt for our communities. The poor and working-class people of Khayelitsha cannot advance their struggle in this way. To build their own power they need patient organisation and unity with people from Cape Town to Mitchell's Plein, Gugulethu to Manenberg.

10. For more than two weeks now, the actions of Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape have punished poor and working-class people in Khayelitsha. They have encouraged the police to become a law unto themselves and have prevented services such as refuse collection and water maintenance. Ambulance and fire services - already over-stretched - could not reach affected areas, or had to deal with 'barricades' and attacks from protestors hurling stones.

11. In the name of Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape, young unemployed people are being used to intimidate their communities but this has failed to bring anything to a 'standstill'. At most it has inconvenienced and endangered workers and the unemployed who use public transport including many elderly people and motorists.

12. The irresponsible actions of Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape are helping the state to criminalise struggle and dissent. They are strengthening the attacks on working class organisations by Helen Zille, Dan Plato and the national government's police, army and intelligence agencies; allowing them to use the argument of 'maintaining law and order' while inequality remains unchanged.

Working class people, informal traders and Khayelitsha residents need to be able to get to work and access services and hence many will sympathise with this call for 'law and order'. In this way Abahlali's false militancy divides the poor and working class and weakens organisation and real struggle.

13. COSATU Khayelitsha, The Treatment Action Campaign, the Social Justice Coalition and Equal Education have for years worked seriously in Khayelitsha and elsewhere. We have never advocated stone-throwing or promoted violence. Our members work patiently, educate themselves and build local leadership to change the system of inequality.

We ask all progressive people in churches, clinics, schools, universities, homes, and local organisations (in Khayelitsha and elsewhere) to distance themselves from mindless violence and calls for chaos that harm the poor and working class and their organisations.

Issued by Treatment Action Campaign, October 12 2010

2. Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape responds

As Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape we have noted the statement by the Treatment Action Campaign and its subsidiary organisations condemning our call for a week of informal settlement’s strike.

We respect the important victories that TAC has won for health care over the years and we respect the work that they have done in solidarity with migrants and GLBT people. We are clear that our enemies are those who put the interest of the elites, be they in business or politics, before the interests of the poor and we are clear that we wish to build as much unity as possible between organisations of the working class. We have always organised on the basis that respects the autonomy of different formations.

However we are very disappointed that TAC chooses to attack our campaign in public without first meeting with us as a fraternal organisation to discuss any concerns that they may have had. We are always willing to meet with any fraternal organisations to discuss agreements, differences and ways forward.

We have our own critique of TAC, of its relationship to the ANC and thereby to a repressive, violent and often criminal government, of its political liberalism, of its internal organisation and hierarchies, of the way that it dealt with the internal revolt in the organisation in 2007 and so on but we do not use these critiques to attack the organisation in public. We will never support the state against TAC but they are supporting the state against us and setting the stage for repression against us to be justified. This is disgraceful.

There are some things that we agree with in the TAC statement.

- We agree with TAC that the government has failed the people and that the predatory elite have more freedom than ever.
- We agree with TAC that mass organisation is necessary and that people need to organise across the city to build their own power against the elites. We agree also that this is a long and difficult process.

We have called for an informal settlement’s strike in Cape Town and we have welcomed the blockading of roads. It has been said that around the world the road blockade is the strike of the unemployed. We have explored all means of engaging the government over many years and have been continually ignored. We did not come quickly or lightly to the decision that it was necessary to cause disorder in order to force the government to take us seriously. We came to this decision after years of being ignored and repressed. We are not alone in coming to this decision. Communities and organisations across the country are blocking roads. This has been going on for many years now. Most of the protests in Cape Town are not by us.

TAC puts in its headline that we are calling for violence. We have never called for violence. Violence is harm to human beings. Blockading a road is not violence. We have long experience of the state calling protests in which no person is harmed violent. We did not expect a social movement to make the same mistake. TAC is being hysterical and dishonest when they say that we are calling for violence. We note that TAC has never issued any statement when we have been evicted from our homes by the Land Invasions Unit or when we have been assaulted by the police. This double standard on the part of TAC is very disappointing. They say that they are concerned about damage to property but they have never issued any statement when our property, our homes, are illegally demolished by the state.

It is an insult to say, as TAC does, that our struggle is not thought through and is not disciplined. Yes we have chosen a different form of struggle to TAC in this campaign. But that does mean that we did not come to this campaign after careful thinking.

We disagree very strongly with TAC when they caricature the wave of protest that is sweeping Cape Town and for years before that the whole country as mindless violence. This is an insult to struggling communities everywhere. We know very well that the state only takes us seriously when we force them to take us seriously and this is what people are doing – forcing the state to take us seriously. We have learnt through years of struggle that this is what works.

It is dishonest and insulting for TAC to say that the leaders of these protests are self-appointed. This is the language of the state. Our leaders are all democratically elected.
It is dishonest to say that we are using young people to activate our campaign. This is also the language of the state. People chose to support our campaign because they think it is the right thing to do.

It is also just wrong for TAC to say that our campaign is being supported by elements in the ANC Youth League. We are very well aware that the ANC Youth League tries to support every protest in Cape Town because they want to undermine the DA. But we know very well that the ANC has the same policies as the DA elsewhere and we do not allow them to exploit our own struggles for their own gain.

There are three main differences between us and TAC.

1. We as Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape feel that it is legitimate to create a short period of disorder, just like a strike at a work place does, as a tactic of struggle. If TAC disagree with us on this they should engage us in a discussion of tactics rather than condemn our campaign in a way that can justify state repression.
2. We do not feel that it is essential that we are organised autonomously from the ANC. This is our democratic right and we will not be intimidated into accepting the leadership of ANC aligned organisations.
3. We are not a professional organisation with millions of rands of donor funding that can operate in the middle class world. We are a movement of, for and by the poor. We therefore have to struggle where we are and with what we have. If that means burning tyres on Landsdown Road then that is how we will struggle. We will not be intimidating into accepting that only the donor funded organisation know how to struggle properly.

We invite TAC to meet us anytime. In the meantime our campaign continues until 28 October when we march on parliament.

For more, please visit the website of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign at:
www.antieviction.org.za and follow us on www.twitter.com/antieviction

Visit Abahlali baseMjondolo at www.abahlali.org and www.khayelitshastruggles.com