ABAHLALI baseMjondolo, the shack dwellers movement, has slammed the city for excluding it at the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA), with four other shack dwellers associations. The organisation claims to represent over 40 000 shack dwellers, living in eThekwini alone and has 39 branches in the city.
Thapelo Mobapi, spokesperson for Abahlali baseMjondolo said: “They are signing agreements with organisations that have no grassroot representation. They do not live among those people and all they are good for is going overseas looking for money from funders. If you really want to change the lives of shack dwellers, how can you not include the biggest shack dweller movement? The reason we have been sidelined by the city is because we refuse be silent on key issues. We are against corruption, we expose repression and we do not stand by while our rights are trampled on. We refuse to be passive participants on issues of shack dwellers and the city does not like that.”
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Following the signing of the MoA with the Shack Dwellers International Alliance (SDIA), Mayor Zandile Gumede explained that the aim of the partnership sought to improve informal settlements and encourage communities to participate in their own development. “By January 2019, we will have good stories to tell and show as a result of this partnership. We don’t just sign partnerships but we action our plans. In the past two months, we have been rolling-out electrification projects in a number of informal settlements.”
In addition, Gumede said to reduce overcrowding in informal settlements, a housing project through provincial government and SDIA would be “hitting ground soon.” She said the partnership was critical to fast-track service delivery.
“This is an important milestone in the history of our City. It is through strategic partnerships like this that we hope to draw in the greatest resource we have to improve the living conditions of our most vulnerable residents,” she said.
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