Abahlali baseMjondolo Take the Provincial Government to Court Over the Notorious Slums Act
 
On Tuesday we lodged papers in the High Court requesting the Court to declare the notorious KwaZulu-Natal Slums Act unconstitutional. Today we can announce that the sheriff has just served those papers on the provincial government. They and our appeal to the court are now in the public domain.
 
The Slums Act is an attack on the poor that has been celebrated by estate agents and lamented by the poor. It is a clear return to the thinking and laws of colonialism (e.g. the 1934 Slums Act) and apartheid (e.g. the 1951 Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act). Today we are calling for a Housing Summit at which all democratic shack dwellers' organisations can negotiate a new partnership and a new Act with government. After years of protests around the country it is clear that we can not go on with failed policies.
 
We need an Act like the City Statute in Brazil or the Kaantabay sa Kauswagan Ordinance in Naga City in Thailand. We need an Act that will guarantee the Right to the City for the poor. We need an Act that will ensure that land in our cities is distributed according to human need and not the greed of the rich. We need an Act that will ensure that no shack dweller must face another year at constant risk of death from life without fire protection, toilets, refuse removal and floods as it is the case in Ash Road settlement in Pietermaritzburg. We need an Act that will ban government expenditure on theme parks and stadiums and newspaper adverts in which politicians promote themselves using the excuse of wishing us happy this and happy that while our children are being killed by rats and diarrhoea and fire. It is an insult to our humanity when money is wasted while people are dying from poverty. We need an Act that will ensure that our cities are safe for women – that the police will serve the people, that there will be lighting, safe toilets and proper public transport. We need an Act that will ensure that there is proper support for community run crèches in each settlement. We need an Act that will make it clear that putting three generations of a family in one room 30 kilometers out of the city is oppression and not a housing programme. We need an Act that will immediately provide subsidised transport, sports fields, clinics and libraries for all the innocent people who have already been forcibly removed out of the cities and sentenced to life in terrible places like Park Gate in Durban and France in Pietermartizburg. We need an Act that will end the top down system of government and NGO planning that has terrorized our people – an Act that will ensure that in each settlement development is planned by the people of that settlement through their organisations in partnership with the government. We need an Act that puts real power in the hands of the people.
 
On 28 September 2007 we marched against the Slums Act in our thousands. We were beaten and 14 of us were arrested.
 
On 21 June 2007 we sent a delegation to the provincial parliament to oppose the Slums Act there. We were denied the right to speak.
 
On 4 May 2007 hundreds of us crowded into the Kennedy Road Hall to tell the government that we are absolutely opposed to the Slums Act. We were ignored.
 
We are going to court because we know that in court we will not be beaten, arrested, denied the right to speak or ignored. 
 
When the Bill was first circulated we read it in small groups line by line. We developed a critique. It is on our website at We discussed the Bill and our critique in meetings across all our affiliated settlements and branches in Durban, Pinetown and Pietermartizburg. Eventually it was decided to issue a call for all people and organisations opposed to this return to apartheid to join us to plan a campaign against the Bill. By the time the Bill became an Act we had created a task team with one job to do – to eliminate the Slums Act. The Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) in Johannesburg was one of the organisations that responded to our call for solidarity against this Act. They took instruction from our movement at various meetings in the shacks and have developed the papers served today in constant discussion with us. They report to our Elimination of the Slums Act Task Team. The Task Team reports to the movement secretariat and the secretariat reports to all the thousands of Abahlali members across Durban, Pinetown and Pietermartizburg. When our lawyers step into court they will not only be carrying the hopes of thousands of people but they will also be guided by the thinking done in our communities. They have acted with us, not for us. We salute CALS for solidarity in action.
 
Despite all the arrests that we have suffered since 2005 not one of our members has ever been found guilty in a court. But we have never lost when we have taken the government to court. We have won many crucial court victories since 2005. We overturned Sutcliffe's illegal ban on our marches in 2006 and working with the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) and other pro bono lawyers we have won interdicts against illegal evictions every year since 2006. We also salute the LRC and the pro bono lawyers for solidarity in action.
 
This is a day of hope for our movement and on this day we note that we are not alone.
 
We reaffirm our full support for all shack dwellers struggling against the destruction of their communities in the name of 'slum clearance' across South Africa and especially the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign and their brave struggle against forced removal. They have been warned that their own Western Cape Slums Act is on the way. We also reaffirm our full support for their struggle for the right to think and lead their own struggle. We reaffirm our full support for all street traders struggling against harassment and eviction across the country. We reaffirm our full support for all families struggling against the eviction of poor children from schools. We reaffirm our full support for all rural people batting evictions from farms and the resilience of the Rural Network to be in solidarity with those families. In this instance, we will stand firm with our comrades from eNkwalini (between Eshowe and Melmoth) when we march together on Friday. We reaffirm our full support for our comrades in the Combined Harare Residents' Association and all the other organisations and people in Zimbabwe still reeling from Operation Murambatsvina. We reaffirm our full support for our comrades battling evictions and other forms of oppression in Turkey and in Haiti. We will be in support of Lavalas, the movement of the Haitian poor that became a flood that had to be dammed and damned by the rich, on the global day of action for Haiti on 29 February 2008.
 
Every person is a person. Every person is important and deserves safety and dignity. One billion of the six billion people in the world live in shacks. Another billion live in housing that is not much better than shacks. Let us no longer accept the unacceptable. Let us build a university of the poor in every city. Let us stop all evictions. Let us move forward to land and housing in the cities.
 
Our settlements are communities to be supported not 'slums' to be eliminated.
 
To hell with the Slums Act.
 
For further information and comment please contact:
 
Sibusiso Zikode, Abahlali baseMjondolo President: 0835470474
Lousia Motha, Abahlali baseMjondolo Co-ordinator: 0781760088

*The full court papers will be loaded onto to our website http://www.abahlali.org shortly.

**Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org