Human Rights Day is Meaningless for the Poor

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement 21 March 2025

The human rights that we celebrate every year are meaningless for many South Africans who continue to endure crushing poverty 30 years after apartheid.

Millions of people continue to live without food, and those who do get food are not eating healthily. Many children suffer from malnutrition, and some even die because their "crime" is being born into poor families. Food has become a commodity that people use to make a profit. In a decent society, healthy food would be fairly distributed to all, but it is being used by elites to make a profit. Our country is ruled by greed, not solidarity.

Many people still do not have access to basic services such as water, sanitation, and refuse removal. Still today, the poor cannot live in the affluent areas on what is called ‘prime land’, because we are considered polluters and criminals and are deemed unworthy to live in these areas. The rich want us to work for them but not to live with them. These elites use heavily armed and, in fact, militarised private security to police and intimidate the poor and to try and keep us off the land. Some of these companies have armed vehicles, drones, and helicopters. All this is often accompanied by open racism.

We see an alarming rise in xenophobia time and again. Politicians across many political parties are actively encouraging xenophobia to scapegoat vulnerable people for the social crisis in the country. This is cowardly and immoral and misleads the oppressed about the causes of our oppression.

Many poor people in shack settlements and rural areas find that when they try to claim the human rights written on paper, they find that these rights do not apply to the poor. We are treated as if we are beneath the law. In fact, we can be left to die in fires and floods, left to go hungry, left without livelihoods. From Marikana to Stilfontein, our own movement and other grassroots struggles have suffered repression, with activists being murdered by the state, private security, and the izinkabi.

The fact that Human Rights Day was previously known as Sharpeville Day shows how the courage and cost of mass struggle for real material changes were turned into abstract human rights rather than a demand for radical democracy, land, decent housing, education, and health care for all. Of course, human rights are important, and we defend all the rights written on paper and struggle to make them real, but we also remain committed to the struggle for deep change in the interests of the people—for land, wealth, and political power to be shared.

Corrupt politicians whose interest is to enrich themselves and their families have betrayed those who have fought for justice. Politicians who have accommodated themselves to capitalism have also betrayed the struggles and interests of the people.

This country is rich enough to take care of all of us. No one should be poor. No child should go to sleep without food. But those who are greedy are doing everything to ensure that inequities continue to grow. The gap between the haves and have-nots continues to grow.

The struggle continues.
Contacts: Thapelo Mohapi – 084 576 5117
Mqapheli Bonono – 073 067 3274
Thandeka Thusini – 076 647 9641

https://abahlali.org/

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