re posted from ABAHLALI baseMJONDOLO
Lindokuhle Mnguni has been assassinated
20 August 2022
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement
Lindokuhle Mnguni has been assassinated
In the early hours of this morning Lindokuhle Mnguni, the chairperson of the eKhenana Commune and the Youth League, was assassinated at the Commune.
Mnguni was a powerful intellectual with a mind like a razor. He was a young man with real vision and commitment, a brave man whose will to struggle was not broken by six months in prison, long periods in hiding and having to bury two close comrades this year. He was already interested in radical ideas while in high school and he read Biko, Fanon, Malcom X and Marx. Mnguni ran a reading group in prison with books such as The Wretched of the Earth and Pedagogy of the Oppressed and various pamphlets that we were able to smuggle into the prison at his request. He was a communist and an internationalist. Meetings at the Commune always started with the Internationale. The Communist Manifesto was studied line by line in the Frantz Fanon school along with writers like Fanon and Freire. Even while living under constant threat Lindokuhle was in solidarity with the struggle against the monarchy in Swaziland. In fact he led a delegation to Swaziland when PUDEMO lost a comrade.
Mnguni’s vision and commitment was central to the achievements of the Commune including the struggle to occupy and hold the land, the model of democratic self-organisation developed in the Commune, its militant commitment to oppose patriarchy, the successful urban farming projects, the collectively managed shop and kitchen, the creche, the poetry project and, of course, the Frantz Fanon School, which attracted militants from around the country and beyond. It was his vision that the school would become a place of learning and building solidarity for the international left. The next step in his vision was to build accommodation for visitors to the school.
The land on which the eKhenena Commune was developed was first occupied in 2018. From there democratic self-organisation was developed from below, confronting many challenges along the way including repeated illegal and violent attempts by the municipality to crush the Commune and intimidation and violence from local ANC structures. The Commune then developed all kinds of collective projects including the successful food sovereignty project, started with seeds donated by the MST in Brazil.
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