20201128

1. Friday, 27 November 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League Statement
Women’s Camp to Build Women’s Power in Struggle
The Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League will hold a camp from 18:00 on Saturday night
to 6:00 on Sunday morning.
Camps are an important space for members of the movement to think together. This camp
will create a space for us to cough out our experiences of suffering, to be in solidarity with
each other and to think together about our lives and struggles in the context of the wider
campaign of 16 days of activism.
During the Covid-19 lockdown many women found themselves under attack from the state as
their homes were repeatedly and violently destroyed. Many women lost their livelihoods and
struggled to find food for themselves and their families. Many women were faced with
domestic violence in their homes. Very few people living in shacks received the Covid-19
grant.
Our motherly is not respected. Our homes are not respected. Our dignity is not respected. Our
intelligence is not respected. Our lives are not respected.
In July when uMthwalume Women, an organisation set up to oppose violence against
women, marched in protest at a number of murders of women on the South Coast their
leader, Hlengiwe Gasa, was arrested. In April twenty-nine brave women were arrested on the
Azania Land Occupation in Cato Manor, when they continued sleeping on the land after
repeated violent evictions.
The government does not see women who organise, speak out and struggle for a better world
as partners in a democratic process. They see us as an enemy to be crushed. Popular
democracy is treated as a crime. We are only supposed to listen and to obey.
We survived the Covid-19 lockdown by shifting some kinds of organising and discussion to
Whatsapp, developing community gardens and community kitchens, cooking and eating
together, developing a national food solidarity program, and making sure that everyone could
speak out and get care and support if they were going hungry.
You never know how strong you can be until being strong is your only choice. We build and
keep our strength in our togetherness. This is how we survive and resist oppression.
The program for this camp includes discussions on economic oppression, social oppression
and oppression at work with a special focus on racism and capitalism. There will also be
sessions on gender-based violence, women and land and women and livelihoods.
We are in solidarity with all women facing evictions across the country, and with all our
sisters who are born in other countries and are now facing violent xenophobia in South
Africa.
A woman is a woman where ever she may find herself. Solidarity has no borders. Our
strength is in our unity. Building women’s power in struggle – democratic bottom up power –

2. is the only way to defeat oppression.