Abahlali baseMjondolo and Dear Mandela Documentary

Abahlali baseMjondolo and DEAR MANDELA documentary: touring United States & Haiti

New York, Boston, Burlington, Ithaca, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Haiti

This October, two youth leaders from Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shackdwellers movement of South Africa) are visiting 8 American cities and Haiti to share their experience and analysis of the largest social movement of the poor in post apartheid South Africa and to screen the new award-winning film Dear Mandela. They will meet with leaders of grassroots organizations and engage with young people in a conversation about leadership, bottom-up democracy and building a movement to end poverty. The tour is hosted by the Poverty Initiative, the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative and the Center for Constitutional Rights, and supported by a dozen organizations including Amnesty International, Vermont Workers Center, United Workers (Baltimore), Media Mobilizing Project (Philadelphia), and the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization amongst others. The tour will end with a visit to Haiti, hosted by the Housing Collective, to meet earthquake survivors living in displacement camps and to screen the new Kreyol version of Dear Mandela.

For more information about the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement, please visit http://abahlali.org/

For more information about Dear Mandela, please visit http://dearmandela.com/

For the schedule please visit http://abahlali.org/node/9218

ABOUT DEAR MANDELA

“STIRRING…evocatively shot, lucidly edited.” – Variety

“Illustrates how fresh injustices have succeeded the inequality once enforced by apartheid.” - NEW YORK TIMES

"GRIPPING” - City Press. "ENTHRALLING" - Mahala Magazine "INSPIRING" - Hackney Citizen. “BEAUTIFUL AND INSIGHTFUL” – Africa Is a Country

When the South African government begins evicting shack dwellers from their homes, three friends living in Durban’s shantytowns refuse to be moved. DEAR MANDELA follows their journey to South Africa’s highest court as they invoke Nelson Mandela’s example and become leaders in a social movement led by shack dwellers. Mazwi, an enlightened schoolboy, Zama, an AIDS orphan and Mnikelo, a mischievous shopkeeper, discover that the new ‘Slums Act’ violates the rights enshrined in the country’s constitution. By turns inspiring, devastating and funny, DEAR MANDELA offers a fresh perspective on the youth’s role in a South Africa coming of age.

WINNER, GRAND JURY PRIZE, BROOKLYN FILM FESTIVAL WINNER, BEST DOCUMENTARY, BROOKLYN FILM FESTIVAL WINNER, BEST SOUTH AFRICAN DOCUMENTARY, DURBAN INT’L FILM FESTIVAL AFRICAN ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY WINNER, GOLDEN BUTTERFLY AWARD, MOVIES THAT MATTER FILM FESTIVAL

For more information about Dear Mandela, please visit http://dearmandela.com/

SCREENING TOUR PARTICIPANTS

Zodwa Nsibande was elected as the first General Secretary of the Abahlali baseMjondolo Youth League on 16 June 2008 and re-elected on 16 June 2009. She is also the National Administrator of the movement. Zodwa has been involved in all the activities of the movement but has played a particularly important role in the annual Back to School Campaigns, the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo, resistance to evictions, resistance to xenophobia, solidarity with comrades who have been arrested, Haiti solidarity, UnFreedom Day Campaigns, the 2008 City Wide Shack Fire Summit and preparing for the movements Annual General Meetings. Zodwa was born in eNhlalakahle in eMdlovana (Greytown) in 1984 and moved to Kennedy Road in 2003 to be able to further her studies.

For Zodwa, the Youth League “is a space where young leaders of Abahlali baseMjondolo are being groomed so that when their time for leadership comes they can take on their responsibilities. Leaders are not born. They are made in struggle. They learn through long experience in struggle. A leader must know how to listen to everyone, to create space for everyone to speak, to belong and to be respected. A leader must know how to be led. A leader must be able to face repression with courage. What is important in development is human development whereby a person must grow in mind and social development whereby a person must move from a shack to a house. We have seen the shift in human development. We created this shift ourselves in our movement. My wish is to now see the shift in social development. We are still struggling to see this shift."

Mnikelo Ndabankulu is one of the founding members of Abahlali baseMjondolo and was elected as the movement’s spokesperson on 23 November 2008. He lives in the Foreman Road settlement where he is Deputy Chairperson of the Foreman Road Abahlali baseMjondolo Committee. He is 28. Mnikelo has been involved in all of the movement’s major mobilisations from planning to action. He has often been subject to police harassment and on 28 September 2008 he was arrested on charges of ‘Public Violence’ and ‘Attending an Illegal Gathering’ when he went to visit 13 comrades who were being held at the Sydenham Police station. He has recently been closely involved in the struggle to keep Foreman Road electrified. Mnikelo was born in the Village of Flagstaff in the Eastern Cape on 16 June 1984. He first came to Foreman Road in 1998 during the school holidays to stay with his brother. When he first saw the Foreman Road settlement he thought it was an ihoko (pig pen) and that a big umlungu (white person) was keeping his pigs there. He was completely shocked that human beings were staying in such a place. In March 2012, Amnesty International recognized his work with the 'Golden Butterfly' Human Rights Prize in a ceremony at The Hague in the Netherlands.

Dara Kell (Dear Mandela co-director) is an award-winning South African documentary and television editor. Her editing work includes Academy Award- nominated ‘Jesus Camp’ and ‘The Reckoning’ (which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival). Dara is a media educator and facilitates camera and editing trainings with grassroots groups across the United States. She graduated from Rhodes University with a Bachelor of Journalism in Documentary Filmmaking and Political Science.

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Sekwanele! No House! No Land! No Vote! Everyone Counts

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For more, please visit the website of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign at: www.antieviction.org.za and follow us on www.twitter.com/antieviction

Visit Abahlali baseMjondolo at www.abahlali.org and www.khayelitshastruggles.com

The Poor People's Alliance: Abahlali baseMjondolo, together with with Landless People's Movement (Gauteng), the Rural Network (KwaZulu-Natal) and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, is part of the Poor People's Alliance - a unfunded national network of democratic membership based poor people's movements.

ENDS

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