Thapelo Molefe
Amnesty International South Africa (AISA) executive director Shenilla Mohamed said the rise in assassinations of Abahlali Basemjondolo Movement [AbM] members highlights the State’s inability to safeguard the activists in KwaZulu Natal.
On Wednesday, Mohamed tabled the organisation’s report on the State’s failure to adequately respond to the various forms of harassment, intimidation, and violence against AbM including allowing complete impunity for the perpetrators.
Eight AbM members, including three children, were slain at eKhenana – an informal settlement established in 2018 in eThekwini, formerly known as Durban – over the course of six months in 2022. And at least five of the eight murdered people were killed because of their activism.
AISA’s investigations found that all three – Nokuthula Mabaso, Ayanda Ngila, and Lindokuhle Mnguni – were either key witnesses in cases of killings of fellow AbM members or the subject of baseless, trumped-up charges such as murder or assault.
Mohamed said South African authorities have failed to protect the members of the Abahlali movement who are human rights defenders.
“The authorities are failing to protect members of the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement who play a crucial role in ensuring accountability and advancing human rights and social justice.
“Tragically, many of these brave individuals face intimidation, harassment, threats, and attacks, sometimes even deadly, simply for their efforts to defend human rights,” Mohamed said.
For over a decade, AbM members often became the targets of those wishing to silence and suppress their struggle, and this is exactly what has been happening in eKhenana, which bore the brunt in the worst way possible, the report said.
Death threats against eKhenana commune members and AbM leadership are common, but all AbM interviewees told Amnesty International that police refuse to open and conduct thorough and effective investigations, collect evidence, or make arrests in response to threats and attacks.
According to AbM members questioned, the three members killed in 2022 received threats prior to their deaths, but police did not take any steps to provide them with appropriate security.
While certain South African Police Service (SAPS) personnel have backed AbM, the movement’s members have expressed a general distrust of law enforcement, which has resulted in fewer incidents being reported to police, the report showed.
SERI executive director Nomzamo Zondo submitted that what made the words “our lives count for nothing” come to life for her were the lives that had been lost.
“So when Abahlali says our lives count for nothing, they say in this system, firstly, we are losing our lives to public violence. This is violence that is pushed on them by our government, whether it is the police, the land control unit of Ethekwini, or it is private violence in Gabi,“ Zondo said.
She said three days after Ayanda was killed, the police had killed Siyabonga Munguni, and they killed him when they had gone to arrest him.
She alleged that the ANC was hiring people to kill the Abahlali leaders.
“So I can speak directly to the two convictions that I referenced now. So the killer of Ayanda Ngila, who is convicted for killing him, is a young man whose father is a respected ANC leader within eKhenana, Khaya Ngubane.
“In relation to the killing of Thuli Ndlovu, which is another conviction, of the two people that were convicted for her murder, one of them was an ANC ward councillor.
“So the ANC can come, but at the very least they can go to the courts and engage that information. And in fact, Abahlali has been clear that the reason we’re a problem with the ANC is because we have a problem with their policies, but we felt the impact of ANC leadership in our lives in this way.”
“And just the two examples of Ayanda Ngila being killed in March 2022 and Thuli Ndlovu speaks to that,” Zondo said.
AbM Secretary-General Thapel Mohapi confirmed the allegations against the ruling party in KZN.
Mohapi said it is very difficult to be a human rights defender in this country, someone who stands in the forefront in defending the rights of poor, impoverished people, “to such an extent that we are no longer living in our communities.
“The leadership of Abahlali, myself, the deputy president, including the president of the movement, we had to go underground.
“I’m living in fear. I lock myself every time because we are targeted. And, of course, in Khenana, now, every time people were opening cases of being harassed and repressed by the ANC, to some extent being killed, the police officer would sometimes phone the perpetrators and say, should I open the case for this particular individual?, he said.
He added that they attempted reaching out to the KZN Police Commissioner, General Mkhwanazi, to report the behaviour of his officers at Ward 101 but failed.
“When you are poor and living in informal settlements, your voice does not count in this country, particularly when you go to the police station. Nobody listens to you because you don’t count in society,” he said.
INSIDE POLITICS
