Robert Ascherman
Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers) Movement South Africa
South Africa
When did you join AbM?
I joined in 2005, but wasn’t very involved until 2007.
What were you doing before joining AbM?
I was a construction worker and just a member of AbM because it started where I was living, in Kennedy Road. I bought a membership card and attended meetings but was not very much involved.
Before you joined AbM were you in a political party? Were you voting?
Before I joined had no political affiliation but I was voting if it came for a voting period. [I voted for] the ANC, of course.
Did you stop voting in 2005 or was it later?
What made me get fed up with voting was those local elections where we voted for Ward Councilors. We had so many engagements with our Ward Councilors but they weren’t fruitful, so I realized this thing of voting does not make any sense for us. We keep on voting but there’s nothing in it for us. We just keep uplifting people’s status. Since 2005 I have not been eager to vote anymore.
Why did you decide to get more involved in 2007?
You will be surprised. You know, when I’m telling this story I can feel tears in my eyes. What happened is on February 15 I was actually a training for a marathon, after work and I got stabbed by two guys who were in the bushes alongside Kennedy Road. I ran away but they stabbed me in such a way that I couldn’t even see, but I managed to get out of the bush and back to Kennedy. When I got back the committee members asked who stabbed me, and later the guys were caught. One of them was supposedly beaten and we heard that he died in the police van. After he died the first person that was arrested was me and some of the committee members and we were put together in the Westville Prison, where we talked about Abahlali. I had no idea what Abahlali really was, I just knew it was for my community so I had joined it. I didn’t have a clear picture of what Abahlali stood for though. While in jail they convinced me to get more involved and be closer to the community so I could have a role in the committee. We spent about three weeks in prison and then decided to engage in a hunger strike since we believed we had been wrongfully arrested. After we were released on bail, 30,000 rand since there were six of us, I decided since these people had helped me so much while in prison – constantly visiting us, writing articles for us, paying my bail and explaining to me what Abhali was all about – I decided to get more involved. I came to the Kennedy Road Development Committee and became the secretary for the committee for a year and then was voted general secretary the next year for about two terms.* Then in 2012 I was called by the now deputy president to assist here in the office, since I had some skills even though I didn’t do administration in university. I agreed because this is our movement and I want to help take it further.
*Author’s note: Terms were one year then; they’re now two years.
Did you have any leadership experience before joining AbM?
The answer is a big no. I never used to be in any leadership structure… But I used to be a shop steward at the construction company I was at because I understood a bit about rights and a lot of my coworkers didn’t know what their rights were. But no, I didn’t have any leadership skills.
Where you trained when you became shop steward?
No I was just elected, because in our team I was the only person who finished metric and who spoke English best, not that it was 100%. I could communicate with the employers and they chose to communicate with me as a relay to the other guys.
How much schooling did you receive?
I received a two year certificate from university in Participatory Management, around like community development.
What do you see as AbM’s current strategy?
We recently had a workshop where we were planning our strategy from this year forward. It was like a five year plan from now to 2020. We have so many things we are willing to do to put this movement forward and see more changes in our communities. One of them is to mobilize, and we know if we do that we won’t be glad to just see numbers without changes in people’s daily lives. Our plan is to civilize more of our programs, and introduce more programs that will educate people about their rights. People will not sit there not knowing what their rights are. We have to mobilize and educate people.
What about the issue of people joining AbM but then leaving once the immediate threat of an eviction passes?
Yes people join us because they’re being chased away by bulldozers, but we have to explain to them that we are not a law firm. Here we are a group-based struggle. If you come to AbM you have to know you’re coming to a bigger family where you can fight with your communities, whatever challenges you may be facing. The other thing that will happen is AbM will never fight for you, we will fight with you. The best thing to do is tell people of their rights when they come here so that they can see how much power they have.
What’s the ANC’s strategy against AbM right now? How are they trying to beat you?
It’s very bad, before they used to label us with all these names. They used to call us rapists, they used to call us thieves, they used to say we were misleading people. Currently they are quiet and we’re not too sure what strategy they will come up with, but I think they are quiet because here in the city there is a completion between Zamdela and the City Mayor. They’re fighting for the top position of being the regional chairperson. Maybe they’re still quite because they’re still focusing on that completion. We don’t know what their strategy will be when they come back.
One thing they do is that in each and every community when we organize a meeting they mobilize another one at the same time so that people won’t come to the Abahlali meeting. That’s how they used to disturb our links to the communities. And when they call those meetings they’re not discussing anything serious, it’s just the same empty promises as always.
Before we used to receive a lot of threats but fortunately there were not a lot of leaders that died. Unfortunately we lost Thuli, she received threats, several, but we were anywhere they were going to kill her. Those are the strategies they used to put fear in us. It’s surprising in a lot of communities people still believe the ANC has a lot to do for them.
If you come out as against the ANC or their corruption they declare you a rebel and make sure you will not get service deliveries. In our branches they’ve made sure to sanction them. If there are service deliveries they pull them off, like water, sanitation, electricity. They just stop it. Maybe this is their way of cutting down the number of people who are willing to join Abahlali.
Do you think their tactics to stop delivering services is effective, or ineffective in preventing AbM from growing and retaining members since people know how to tap into the water and electricity lines?
When they cut off services it just makes people more angry and more people will join AbM. But we are getting worried because those basic services are provided by our own money, by our tax payer money. It’s not any political party’s money, but the party that’s voted into government is given the power to utilize our money and the state money to give us services. But ANC, the way they do it now, they treat it like it’s from their own money. Their tactics are effective but people are also encouraged to fight all those things by the only way possible: joining Abahlali.
My next question is around Xenophobia: have there been outbreaks recently?
It happened in 2009 or 2008, when they were beating up the foreigners. They stopped it and it did not happen for a long time, it was really just a week. But the recent outbreak was the worst case I’ve ever heard off. I wonder if these Xenophobia attacks are still happening, and if so who are they being perpetuated by. It seems here we are fighting amongst each other for a white bull. The government that’s supposed to take initiative to fight this Xenophobia it seems like they’re the ones who are introducing it. They pretend like they protect these people.
How does Xenophobia hurt AbM?
First off all we believe justice has no rest. As you are here in South Africa, I believe you should be treated with great respect and enjoy the benefit of every right here in South Africa. So I as well if I go to America. Abahlali is organizing everywhere and we accept in the movement people from whichever political party. So we do not discriminate against people based on their color and we believe everyone has rights. There are reasons why these people from other foreign countries are here from South Africa. It is not true that they are here to take our jobs. It is not true. There is a particular reason. And the other thing is that our own government, if they don’t want people to flock into this country, they can do something about it, but they allow them to come in and then they are the ones persuading us to beat them up. Why? We must focus on fighting while on the other side they focus on corruption and making money from our suffering? We believe those people are allowed by our own government to come in so that we will fight them instead of the government, if we have to fight someone.
Something that worries me is these people are black like us. Why should we fight them? If we talk about foreigners, who’s a foreigner exactly? Is the foreigner a black person from another country, or any person from another country? Here in South Africa there are Indians, there are Chinese, there are Somalians, there are other blacks from North Africa, there are even whites. So if we say we are fighting against the foreigners who are the foreigners we’re fighting against and why should we fight in the first place? Why should we fight, instead of concentrating on what we’re doing at the particular time?
How is AbM responding to Xenophobia?
Our response to Xenophobia is to alert communities to this problem and make them aware that Xenophobic attacks are a government strategy to make us fight each other so we won’t focus. We have to explain to people that there are other bigger issues and people perpetuating these attacks. It is not for us or our communities to fight against one another. We have to look carefully against it. Our stand is to talk about it in our communities and explain these are our brothers and sisters. If they are foreign we have to be clear who they are and who we’re fighting .
One way we’re dealing with this is we’ve partnered with the Democratic Republic of Congo Solidarity Campaign and promised to help them with all the issues in their country. We still have that obligation and thus we can’t move from condemning Xenophobia.