M’du Hlongwa (26) lives in the Lacey Road settlement in Durban. He is unemployed and does volunteer work for people living with HIV/Aids. He is a member of Abahlali base-Mjondolo.
South Africa does not think of the poor. The poorest of the country are the majority, but we are kept voiceless. The poorest I am talking about are the shack dwellers, the street traders, the street kids, the flat dwellers who can’t afford the rent, and the unemployed from Cape Town to Musina and from Richards Bay to Alexander Bay.
We always say that the fact that we are poor in life does not make us poor in mind. We know that our country is rich. The Freedom Charter said that the wealth of South Africa should benefit the people of South Africa, but it is not like that.
The land of our ancestors was taken for the farms and the forests. Our grandparents and parents worked on those farms and in the mines and factories and houses. Now we either try to make a living selling to other poor people or we are the servants who come quietly into the nice places, with our heads always down, to keep them nice and to keep them working for the rich.
Most of our time goes into just trying to survive. To get some little money, to get water, to see a doctor, to rebuild our homes after they have burnt down, to get our children into school or to try to stop evictions.
Our shacks are flooded during heavy rains. And our shacks get burnt down in fires because the city thinks that we don’t deserve to have electricity. We are always losing our belongings in these fires and sometimes loved ones, especially children and old people, are lost. How many lives will be destroyed before our voices are heard? How many children will drown in rivers on the way to school because “there is no budget” to build bridges, while casinos and airports and theme parks have huge budgets?
Who will do something about the fact that the police, who are supposed to protect the people, are always abusing us? Is it right that they come into our houses and ill-treat us, insult us, steal from us and hit us? Who will do something about the fact that even when our youth finish grade 12 they just sit at home because there is no work and because their parents can’t afford to send them to university?
Who will turn our economy from something that lets the rich get richer off the suffering of the poor into something that lets all the people make a better life?
The politicians have shown they are not the answer to our suffering. The poor are the ladders of the politicians. Politicians are animals that hibernate. They always come out in the election season to make empty promises and then they disappear. They don’t work for the people who put them there. Our suffering ends up working for them. Their power comes because they say that they will speak for us. That is why we say, “speak to us and not for us”.
Even some NGOs call us criminal when we speak for ourselves. We are supposed to suffer silently so that some rich people can get rich from our work and others can get rich having conferences about having more conferences about our suffering. These conferences demand our support, but they never support our struggles. We are always on our own when the fires come or when the police come or when the city comes to evict us.
In South Africa the poor must always be invisible. We must be invisible where we live and where we work. We must even be invisible when people are getting paid to talk about us in government or in NGOs.
Everything is done in our name. We are even told that the 2010 World Cup is for us when we can’t afford tickets and will be lucky even to watch it on television. The money for stadiums should go for houses and water and electricity and schools and clinics. Even now shacks are being destroyed and street traders are being abused by police to make us invisible when the visitors come.
But before 2010 is 2009, the year of the national elections. I want to see who will be queueing on that hot or rainy day to vote. Voting to me is the same as throwing your last money in a flooded river. I believe many people who voted before want to go and ask for their Xs back. Abahlali sensed this early and in the 2006 local government elections we said, “No Land, No House, No Vote”.
We got beaten by police for that and some NGO people said we were too stupid to understand what elections were for and that we needed “voter education”. They need an education in the politics of the poor.
From the local government to the provincial and national parliaments I only see politicians on gravy trains and holidays and in conferences with the rich. They are the new bosses, not the servants of the poor. They deceive us and make fools of us. They ask us for our vote and then disappear with our votes to their big houses and conferences where they plan with the rich how to make the rich richer. Their entrance fee for these houses and conferences is us. They sell us to the rich. Can anyone show one politician who has stood up to say build houses, not stadiums? Can anyone show one politician who has said land should be for the poor who are still waiting to be a real part of South Africa and not for more shops and golf courses? Can anyone show one politician who has stood with us when the police shoot at us?
Let us keep our votes. Let us speak for ourselves where we live and work. The poor are many. We have shown that together we can be strong. Let us work to make ourselves the strong poor. Let us vote for ourselves every day.