Mourning Freedom

For the last few weeks I've been busy helping organize the "UnFreedom Day" rally, which happened yesterday. It was a great success and a huge inspiration. It was amazing to see the unity bubbling here between communities that have been divided for so long. Something about laughing, dancing and singing together is so important in sustaining the struggle. For me, it is moments like these that keep me going....

Heinrich Böhkme and I also screened the 10 minute film we have been making called "Inkani" at the event. “Inkani” traces the last 7 years of the struggles that have been happening in post-apartheid Durban -- a story that is not often heard. The film is made up of archival and new images from actions, marches and repressions that have been part of these communities experience over the last number of years. We filmed these same communities watching images of themselves and plan to integrate these images into the final cut of the film before it screens at the Durban International Film Festival in June.

Here is my report on the day:

Thousands from Durban’s poorest communities marked this Freedom Day with their own event: “UnFreedom Day”. “UnFreedom Day” mourned a freedom that has yet to be found. After 12 years of democracy, the gap has increased between the rich and the poor, and many are suffering more now than ever before. How can there be freedom when people’s rights are disrespected, and they must continue to demand the basic necessities of bare life?

Joining together across race, creed, and place, these communities may have been mourning freedom, but St-John’s hall was alive with unity, talent, inspiration and hope.

Together the young and old danced, sang, toyi-toyied, laughed, shouted and shared their collective experience of oppression under the current government. Their demands are simple and thoughtful. They can not endorse a government which continues to refuse to provide basic services – sanitation, homes, water, and electricity – to the city’s poorest of poor. They demand decent homes, free basic services, rights for informal workers, a healthy, clean environment, and equality for all. They fight against forced relocations, evictions, water and electricity cut offs, lying politicians, pollution, state repression, police brutality and land theft. The hall, bursting with people, brought home one message: “There is no Freedom for the Poor”.

“UnFreedom Day” was organized across racial divides from Wentworth, Chatsworth, Bayview, Isipingo, Umlazi, Chatsworth Flat Residents, Marianridge, Merebank, Sydenham, Newlands, Pinetown, Ward 15, Abahlali baseMjondolo (shackdwellers) movement branches from Kennedy Road, Foreman Road, Jahdu Place, Lacey Road, Shannon Drive and Reservoir Hills, as well as many other communities. There was a unity of purpose around the collective realization that the issues within each community are shared across borders and partitions that once may have divided them.

The day was bursting with inspiring talent, including gospel singers from Kennedy Road, the Clouded House girls dance troupe from Wentworth, Zwelithini Gamede from Kenville, the Crush hip-hop crew, Alan Murphy (a.k.a. REM) and Crush, Imfene from Foreman Road, Xhosa dancing, a drama performed by children about Chatsworth evictions, and many others…

There were also a number of speeches and testimonies about the conditions people are living in across eThekwini that continue to oppress them, including a call to support those who had lost shacks in Lacey Road after a recent fire and a moment of silence to commemorate Strini Moodley’s death led by Des D’Sa. There were powerful speeches made by Pine Town’s informal traders, Pastor Patrick Kakazi, Mbongeni Msomi from Ward 15, S’bu Zikode, Orlean Naidoo and others.

Mourning for these communities comprised not only of stories of hardship and oppression, but also a celebration of what they have in common – a celebration, in fact, of the unity, talent and determination that continues to grow, even in the face of such difficult and trying times. “UnFreedom Day” was a clear sign that a new, unified movement is growing across eThekwini municipality. It is a movement committed to stand together and to fight back, in opposition to the old antagonisms that once divided them, and to demand real freedom now.

The blood on Xulu's hands

Yesterday the residents of Ward 80 in Umlazi, a township outside Durban, staged a large march to demand the removal of their corrupt councillor, Elliot Xulu, and to rally against police brutality. The march was planned by a group of women, mainly pensioners, organized under the name "Women of Ward 80".

About 1000 people took to the streets in the hot sun and under the threat of the councillor. The night before councillor Xulu and his thugs had driven around E section with a loudspeaker threatening that people would be arrested or killed if they marched against him. There is a lot of fear in the community around the
repercussions of speaking out against the councillor, so the large number of people who were present spoke to how fed up people are of the conditions in which they are living.

At one point, marchers spontaneously sat down in the middle of a busy intersection (pictured here in a photo taken by Raj Patel), much to the shock of the police, before continuing again on their way.

Residents of Ward 80 were also marching to draw attention to the tragic killing of Nomthandazo Monica Ngcobo. The day after the election residents held an impromptu demonstration against Bhekisisa Elliot Xulu's re-election which they claim was marred by significant corruption and intimidation. Monica, 23 years old, was heading to catch the bus when the Public Order Police shot out at the gathered crowd. Monica was struck with live ammunition in the back.

“I saw her, where she was lying”, said one onlooker. “She was still alive. She was bleeding. We never saw the wound because she was lying on her back. Maybe if the paramedics had arrived earlier… she lay there for a long time. About an hour.”

Her family was present at the march, demanding that Monica’s death not be in vain.

Overall, confrontation with the police was minimal, even though they did attempt to thwart the march early in the day, would not let marchers enter the grounds of the court to which they were marching, and later arrested 20 young men on the charge of public violence. The youths had thrown bricks at one of Xulu's thugs who was attempting to film the protesters, ostensibly to be able to identify who was marching. The thugs (possibly with Xulu as well) zoomed off in black cars with darkly tinted windows as though they were in a gangster movie.

In the end, the memorandum of demands had to be handed off to the police sergeant since neither the local government minister Mike Mabayakhulu or the councillor Elliot Xulu pitched up. A number of marchers were disgruntled (obviously) about handing off the memorandum to the police. Yet for others, it seemed like the best thing to do since there was no one else on hand. The reverence for police (in the context of opposing police brutality) and the ANC government (in the context of opposing the councillor) was slightly disturbing, but seems to be the place where this struggle is situated at this early stage.

Raj Patel wrote a great summary of yesterday's events here.

Raj also got some great pics posted on Indymedia South Africa here, and also stolen by me above.