If you have five seconds…
Please sign this petition and tell the South African government that, particularly as the World Cup approaches, you’ll be watching – and that, soccer or no soccer, the displacement of poor communities and murders of innocent people are unacceptable.
If you have five minutes…
I recently attended the screening of a documentary-in-progress titled Dear Mandela, to be released in Fall 2010.
Trailer here: http://vimeo.com/6648949
The filmmakers are seizing the 2010 World Cup as an opportunity to call out the South African government for enforcing “a new apartheid.” They say that the government is prioritizing its national image for the television cameras while continuing to deny basic rights to its poorest citizens. The film highlights the Shack Dwellers’ Movement, or Abahlali baseMjondolo, a group of activists and organizers from Durban that formed in 2005.
Author, researcher and professor Raj Patel has worked with Abahlali for years and wrote this week:
The movement’s key demand is for ‘Land & Housing in the City’ but it has also successfully politicised and fought for an end to forced removals and for access to education and the provision of water, electricity, sanitation, health care and refuse removal as well as bottom up popular democracy. In some settlements the movement has also successfully set up projects like crèches, gardens, sewing collectives, support for people living with and orphaned by AIDS and so on. It has also organised a 16 team football league and quarterly all night multi genre music competitions.
Gardens and sewing collectives: not so threatening.
But provision of water, electricity, sanitation? Apparently there’s only so much of each of those resources to spread around – especially when sports arenas need building and a “15 years post-democracy in the Rainbow Nation” world image needs upholding.
It seems that in the government’s view, one way to prepare for the big event is to silence these rabble-rousers (read: poor people of color who, as they are displaced, are forced to commute ever-longer distances into the cities, where if they’re lucky they can earn meager wages building stadiums even though they likely won’t be able to afford tickets to any games. Which is wrenching in itself, but that’s another post).
Yesterday Reclaiming Spaces wrote:
In one of the poorest shack settlements in Durban, South Africa, armed thugs have been reported to have killed settlement residents and destroyed their home in a coordinated and racially motivated attack. Local police appear to be entirely complicit in these attacks, as do local members of the African National Congress.
Today Abahlali blogged:
The ANC has invaded Kennedy Road…Our message to the movements, the academics, the churches and the human rights groups is this:
We are calling for close and careful scrutiny into the nature of democracy in South Africa.
Scrutinize away: learn more at the Dear Mandela Facebook page or straight from the source at Abahlali.org.
*Quick kudos: At the screening, two Abahlali organizers were present to discuss the film and their work, and the filmmakers stayed fairly quiet. This is my favorite way to see a documentary: to have the chance to hear from the “subjects” about what isn’t included in the film, and how they would like the viewers to take subsequent action if we feel so inspired.
Via Jared, who is awesome himself.
Our own Elissa Bassist has been having a 
