South Africa: Empirical evidence that the Kennedy 8 are being framed

Yesterday I was at the bail hearing for the 'Kennedy 8'.

I came to Durban from Cape Town to meet up with staff members of the Clare Estate Drop-in Centre which operated in Kennedy Road supporting orphaned and other vulnerable children until the recent attacks where the CEDIC was ransacked and forced to close.

I attended the hearing to find out more about what has been happening in Kennedy Road since the 26th of September. At the hearing, about 100 or so members of the social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo packed the court room to see their fellow activists. The few hundred who could not fit inside waited patiently in the adjacent foyer.

When I spoke to them, they all knew exactly why there were at the hearing: "to support our friends and fellow Abahlali who were wrongly arrested by the corrupt Sydenham Police". But why were there hundreds of community members who were there to support 8 people that our government has labelled as criminals?

It seems, if one thinks about things logically, that there are a few facts which have come out that we all can agree on:

1) On the night of the 26th of September, a mob of about 40 armed people attacked an Abahlali baseMjondolo youth meeting.
2) A number of people died during the incident
3) Many people were displaced by the attacks
4) The 8 arrested residents of Kennedy Road are self-identified members of Abahlali baseMjondolo

Since the above are agreed to facts, we should therefore be asking a key question which, I believe, exposes an important contradiction in the story being publicised by the MEC:

Why is it that, if the attacks targeted Abahlali members, the police with the support of the MEC arrested only members of the same Abahlali movement?

According to this kind of logic, the MEC and the police are effectively saying that Abahlali baseMjondolo attacked itself!

But if this were true, then why are Abahlali united in supporting the Kennedy 8? Why is the AbM youth league, which was attacked, claiming that the Kennedy 8 are innocent?

Here is the key contradiction in the Mchunu's claims. This contradiction shows that the MEC's version of the events is riddled with misinformation and outright lies.

During the course of the day, about 100 ANC members - fully clad in zuma election t-shirts - arrived on a chartered bus at the magistrates court and began chanting: "Down with Abahlali baseMjondolo!" and singing ANC freedom songs. I went over and spoke to some of them but they didn't seem to know why there were at the court house. They claimed that they were residents of Kennedy Road but when I asked them if they are here to support the people who were arrested, some of them said that they were. Others were visibly unsure. When I inquired further, they didn't seem to know anything about any 'forum' terrorising the community. Nor did they know anything about supposed curfews being imposed in Kennedy Road. Only the leader of the group seemed to know why they were protesting. I left them and walked back inside the court more cynical than ever: did they know anything at all about their own community? Were they even from Kennedy Road?

After a little over two hours of chanting and singing (and many hours before the bail hearing actually took place) they left on the same chartered bus in which they came.

Much later, at about 15h00, Abahlali members walked out of Court #10 with frowns and a few tears on their faces. The Kennedy 8 had been denied bail.

When thinking about yesterday's events, some questions remain: Why is it that only people wearing Zuma shirts are saying down with Abahlali baseMjondolo? Why would the ANC hire a bus to bring people to the court who don't even know what they are protesting about?

Yet again, the only reasonable conclusion I can come to is that there is an ANC campaign against Abahlali baseMjondolo and that they are mobilising to make Kennedy Road into an ANC votebank. Why else would Mchunu, who is also a provincial ANC leader, claim to have liberated Kennedy Road from a mysterious forum associated with Abahlali? Why else would the MEC refuse to allow for an independent investigation to find out who was really responsible for the attacks?

Yesterday also I spoke to a volunteer at the CEDIC who has not yet fled Kennedy. She says she's has personally been threatend by the ANC committee that was just installed in the settlement because she is an Abahlali member. She claims this committee is made up of the leaders of last week's militia attacks.

But she says she won't leave becuse she has nowhere else to go...

* Jared Sacks is the Executive Director of the Children of South Africa (CHOSA)