Military reaction to protests won’t work

LAST week the news was full of reports on the arrival of three of the four casspirs that have been ordered by the ethekwini municipality.

We first heard about the order of the casspirs in 2017 when it was reported that the Municipality was ordering four casspirs at a cost of R23.8 million due to the “escalation” of what they call “service delivery protests” and “land grabs” or “land invasions”.

This week we were told that deputy mayor Fawzia Peer was “elated” at their arrival and that they would be used against “protests and land grabs”. The cost is now reported to be R27m.

We read that, “they are airconditioned and officers can access the roof via hatches and shoot through holes cut into the glass”, and that “Fawzia Peer believes that the arrival of multimillion-rand casspirs will strengthen the city’s fight against land invasions and protests”.

Casspirs were a form of armoured vehicles that were developed for the apartheid military. They were first used in the wars in Namibia and Angola, and then used against the uprising against apartheid in the townships. We should only see casspirs in the Apartheid Museum.

The decision to bring them back to use them against protests and land occupations is disgraceful.

The ANC already mobilises all kinds of violence against us in Durban using the izinkabi, the ANTITHERE Land Invasions Unit, municipal security guards and two police forces.

Our members, and others, are regularly wounded, maimed and killed. If the ANC had any real progressive commitments they would see protests as a democratic question and engage them as an opportunity for discussion.

They would see the land question as a question of justice, understand land occupations as land reform from below and work to put the social value of land before its commercial value.

Instead, they want to respond to our organisation against our systematic exclusion and impoverishment with military force.

The ANC talks about land reform while violently attacking land occupations.

They expect impoverished and working-class people to vote for them while they prevent us from building democracy from below and exercising basic democratic rights like the right to protest.

The new casspirs will not stop the struggle for land and dignity.

NOMA SIZANI Abahlali basemjondolo