Political Assasinations in South Africa

David Bruce, The Con

Political assassinations appear to be on the increase in post-apartheid South Africa – especially in more recent years – with researcher David Bruce suggesting as many as 450 people have been killed since the advent of democracy.

Intra-party violence has increased in KwaZulu-Natal since the Inkatha Freedom Party’s splintering of the National Freedom Party. Inter-party violence, especially within the ANC, has also seen a spike to mirror the increased competition for resources, tenders and government positions.

March Against the Politic of Death - Durban 8 November 2014

Escalating Political Violence in South Africa

Richard Pithouse, Mail & Guardian

On Monday evening, not long after the sun went down, a man with a gun stepped out of the dark and into the everyday domestic routine in Thuli Ndlovu’s home in KwaNdengezi, Durban. He shot Ndlovu seven times, and her neighbour’s teenage son twice. Ndlovu died on the spot. Her neighbour’s son is in a critical condition.

Ndlovu was the chairperson of the KwaNdengezi branch of Abahlali baseMjondolo. Like Nkululeko Gwala, a member of the same organisation, who was assassinated in Cato Crest, also in Durban, in June last year, she had been subject to serious intimidation for some time and had told her family and comrades that she expected to die.

Thuli Ndlovu, the Abahlali baseMjondolo Chairperson in KwaNdengezi, was Assassinated last Night

Tuesday, 30 September 2014

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Thuli Ndlovu, the Abahlali baseMjondolo Chairperson in KwaNdengezi, was Assassinated last Night

Between half past six and seven last night an armed man burst into Thuli Ndlovu’s home in KwaNdengezi while she was watching TV. He shot her seven times and she died on the scene. There were two other people in the house at the time. One was Sphe Madlala, an 18 year old neighbour. He finished matric last year and did very well in physics and maths. Our movement has been trying to help him to get into university. He had come to the house to help Thuli’s 17 year old daughter, Sli, with her matric studies in maths and science. Sphe was also shot twice in the stomach but he survived. He underwent surgery at RK Khan Hospital at one this morning and remains in a critical condition. Thuli’s one year old son, Freedom, was also in the house at the time of the shooting. He was not physically harmed. Sli was in a separate outside room with her grandmother at the time of the shooting.

Miners Shot Down

Police wars and state repression in South Africa

Police wars and state repression in South Africa by Melissa Barton

Raymond Suttner on State Repression and Illegality in Durban

"There is Marikana everyday in South Africa" - an interview with Abahlali baseMjondolo

Despite the state's violence, our fight to escape the mud and fire of South Africa's slums will continue

S'bu Zikode, UnFreedom Day, Kennedy Road, 27 April 2009

S'bu Zikode, The Guardian

Our movement of shack-dwellers – Abahlali baseMjondolo, representing some of South Africa's poorest people – was formed in 2005 in Durban and now has more than 12,000 members in more than 60 shack settlements. We campaign against evictions, and for public housing: struggling for a world in which human dignity comes before private profit, and land, cities, wealth and power are shared fairly.

When Abahlali baseMjondolo members take our place in cities we take it humbly, but firmly. We have won many important battles in court, including the overturning of the anti-poor Slums Act – but the law has not bought justice. Despite that victory, thousands of shack dwellers were forcibly removed to make way for developments ahead of the 2010 World Cup. Most were dumped in transit camps, left to rot without basic services. Some camps – such as Isipingo, south of Durban – were built on flood plains.

Unemployed People's Movement march at Grahamstown cathedral in protest at political repression in Durban

The Housing List versus the Death List

by Bandile Mdlalose

We are supposed to be living in a democratic country, a country of justice, a country where everyone should be treated as one. Yet there is a huge inequality. That inequality is economic, it is spatial and it is political. We remain divided into rich and poor. We continue to be allocated to different kinds of places that are meant for different kinds of people with different kinds of opportunities, different kinds of lives and different kinds of rights. We continue to be divided into those that have the freedom to express themselves and those that face all kinds of intimidation and repression if we commit the crime of telling the truths about our lives.

Journalists failing South Africa on police violence

Jane Duncan, Sunday Times, 27 October 2013

Last month, 17 year old Nqobile Nzuza was shot dead by the police in a protest over housing and evictions in Cato Crest informal settlement, Durban. Another person was shot and wounded. The protest was part of a series of road-blockades organised by the shackdwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo.

The police maintain that they acted in self-defence. They say that they were called to the area to respond to a disturbance. Two policemen were attacked by a large crowd, which stoned their vehicle, breaking the windows, and attempting to pull them from it, and they shot at the crowd to prevent themselves from being killed.

Footsoldiers in a social war: the police, crime and inequality in South Africa

Chris McMichael, Open Democracy

With allegations ranging from torture of suspects to involvement in extrajudicial executions, endemic violence has increasingly characterised the reputation of the national South African Police Service (SAPS), and the various supporting Metropolitan departments organised at the city level. A noted hardening of police attitudes towards the citizenry has been typified by an intensification of the force used against demonstrations, which in many cases has included fatal shootings by officers.

S'bu Zikode's full talk on repression in Durban, Rhodes University, 10 October 2013

Durban Poison

Richard Pithouse, SACSIS

On the last day of September Nqobile Nzuza, a seventeen year old girl, was shot dead by the police near Cato Manor in Durban. She was unarmed and she was shot in her back and the back of her head. She was part of a large group of people who were gathering to organise a road blockade in protest at both oppression, in the form of violent and illegal evictions at the hands of the eThekwini Municipality, and the repression of resistance to the evictions in the form of two assassinations. The police claimed that they had fired at the protestors in self-defence. Witnesses vigorously contest this and insist that a police officer, who they have named, fired at the unarmed protestors without provocation or warning.

Oppi TV: Abahlali and "the politic of blood"

HAVE YOU HEARD FROM DURBAN?? MARIKANA CONTINUES!!!

• Three people have been assassinated and others have been shot with live ammunition by state police

• There have been daily evictions and on-going police brutality

• The state has declared war on its poor citizens

Sbu Zikode to Speak at Rhodes University on Thursday 10 October

The Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) in Grahamstown has contacted S’bu Zikode, Chairperson of Abahlali baseMjondolo. He has agreed to speak at Rhodes about state repression and the situation in Durban.

On Wednesday, Dear Mandela will be screened at Rhodes to provide those interested with an over-view of Abm’s struggles. The Multi-award winning documentary produced by Rhodes Graduate, Dara Kell in 2011 follows the story of how Abm was able to take legal action against the state resulting in a court ruling the KZN Slums Act unconstitutional.

When: Wednesday, 9th October 2013

Where: Arts Major

Time: 18:30

Marikana: One Year After the Massacre

by Niren Tolsi, Mail & Guardian

The supplement to the M&G on the anniversary of the Marikana Massacre is online at: http://marikana.mg.co.za/

What happened during the fatal miners’ strike in Marikana in August 2012 did not end there. Thirty-four people were killed in the massacre on August 16. Those miners who survived and were arrested say they were tortured and brutalised by the police. People also died, violently, before and after that date.

Families were left without husbands, brothers, sons and fathers. And a daughter and mother: Pauline Masuhlo was an ANC councillor in the Madibeng municipality and a campaigner for better social conditions in the squalid informal settlements around Lonmin’s shafts. She died from injuries visited upon her during a government clampdown of Nkaneng informal settlement on September 15.

The Antimonies of Democracy

A Murder in Durban, CounterPunch

by RICHARD PITHOUSE

Durban, South Africa.

In the last days of June Nkululeko Gwala was assassinated in Cato Crest – a shack settlement in Durban that is in the process of being upgraded with formal housing. Just over three months ago Thembinkosi Qumbelo was gunned down in the same streets. Both men had been prominent figures in the increasingly bitter struggles around housing that have convulsed Cato Crest in recent months. There have been road blockades, a land occupation – named, as they often are these days, ‘Marikana’ – and the offices of two municipal councillors have been burnt down.

Nkululeko Gwala Murdered in Cato Crest

27 June 2013

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Nkululeko Gwala Murdered in Cato Crest

Last night Nkululeko Gwala, an Abahlali baseMjondolo member, and a well known and respected housing activist, was murdered in Cato Crest. Twelve shots were fired. The style of this assassination is very similar to the assassination of Thembinkosi Qumbelo, also a well known housing activist (but not an AbM member) who was killed in the same area on the 15th of March this year. There are also strong similarities to the attack on our movement in Kennedy Road in 2009.

Nkululeko Gwala