Two people were killed and a dozen injured on Sept 26 when 40 men, armed with guns, assegais and knobkerries, attacked the shantytown along Kennedy Road as a youth camp sponsored by Abahlali base Mjondolo movement, a shack-dwellers’ organization, was underway.

Community and church leaders have denounced the violence, and have blamed property developers linked with the African National Congress (ANC) in part for the violence. KwaZulu-Natal police spokesman Willies Mchunu said those responsible would be tracked down and arrested and the area would be placed under a police watch.

“We condemn the killing of our people. It is absurd for anyone to impose an illegal curfew on residents,” Mchunu told the SAPA news agency.

Bishop Ruben Phillip said the charges of ANC complicity with the violence that had driven the Abahlali base Mjondolo leaders and “hundreds of families out of the settlement” was a “profound disgrace to our democracy.”

“The fact that the police have systematically failed to act against this militia while instead arresting the victims of their violence and destruction is cause for the gravest concern,” he said, adding there were “credible claims that this militia has acted with the support of the local ANC structures. This, also, is cause for the most profound concern.”

He likened the attacks on the shantytowns to the government-sponsored violence of the apartheid era.

“Once again people have been beaten, had their homes destroyed, been driven from their community and killed for their political views and practices. Once again an armed minority have used violence to implement a ban on a democratic organisation favoured by a majority. Once again there is just cause for deep concern about the role of the police.

“Once again we in the churches are looking for safe houses for activists, accommodation for political refugees who have fled with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, doctors for the injured and lawyers for the jailed. Horrors that we all believed to have been buried in our past now stalk the present,” the bishop charged.

The government’s conduct was “unacceptable,” he said, and called for political leaders to “distance themselves” from the actions of the militia” and “call party members who have been complicit with this militia to account.”

All of the residents of the Kennedy Road settlement had the “same right to democratic practices as everywhere else and everyone else in South Africa. This includes the right to dissent,” Bishop Phillip said.

Contact our Africa Desk

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