 On the 31st of July, at least 77 people were killed in a horrific fire in the Marshalltown area and the city of Johannesburg in South Africa. Now most of those killed, the residents of this building were migrants who had come to South Africa in the hope of aching out a better life, migrants from various parts of the African continent. Now in the aftermath of this fire, there has been a lot of discussion, a lot of talk about solutions. But what is shocking is that much of this discussion has focused on targeting the migrants. There has been in fact a wave of xenophobia whipped up by various political elements. And amid all this, a lot of key structural questions have been ignored. What are the housing conditions that led to this fire? Why are the poor in such a bad state? Why is it that migrants have always been targeted? One of the few organizations that has taken a strong stand against xenophobia is Abahali Basem Ajendolo, the Shaq Dwellers movement of South Africa. We have with us today, Tappelo Mohapi, the general secretary of the organization to talk about the fire, as well as the politics of the response that has followed it. Thank you so much for joining us. So first of all, see after the fire, a lot of the discussion and blame has focused on migrants, particularly African migrants. And they've been blamed in various ways and in various reasons. But this seems to be an attempt to divide people considering that the larger issue is perhaps the issue of housing faced by the poor. Could you tell us a bit about the structural reasons for the fire? Yes, first and foremost, we'd like to continue to send our condolences to the families of the people who have lost their loved ones during the fire. Abahali Basem Ajendolo, a Shaq Dwellers movement of the poor, believes that a human being is a human being, no matter wherever they find themselves. We believe that we're all created by God for the same reasons. No one must be more superior. No one must be more powerful than the other. We believe in equality and equality means recognizing the dignity of everyone, regardless of their social economic status and whichever country they come from. We are human beings. We believe in humanity after all. The conditions that the working class and migrant workers have been living under in the bigger city of Johannesburg, Deben and Cape Town has been that we are left to die. There are no services that are provided to the poorest of the poor. We die in Shaq fires. We die in floods as a result of the conditions that we are living under. Whether you are living in the Shaq settlements, you are left to die there. The reason why people in Marshall Sound died in the manner that they died is because they are poor and they are coming from the working class. It is because it is a city that does not care about the poorest of the poor. It is a country that is run by a neoliberal government and the government that is interested in profit maximization over people's lives. So the people's life does not matter. All that matters is profits. And that's why the city of Johannesburg has never built any affordable housing for the working class and the poor in the inner city. We were denied by apartheid as Black people to access the cities. And today we are denied by the elites in the political elite in the government to access the cities. There is a crisis of housing in Johannesburg in particular where there's a backlog of more than 300,000 people who do not have access to housing. And the cities have become so expensive for the working class. We, the working class, are building these cities. And these cities, when they are supposed to accommodate us, we are not accommodated. And it's only the elites that are able to live in these cities. But we are the ones who build the buildings that are in these cities. And yet we can't even afford it because they are overpriced by the capitalist system. Right, Abel, in this context, given the sort of context you mentioned, I just wanted to ask you how this sort of reflects, how does this fire reflect on the larger approach of the post-apartheid state? Because there was a specific promise that was made to the people, a promise not only of justice but also of equality, all these slogans that were given at that point of time. How is it that after all these years we are in a position where an incident like this happens? First and foremost, we were sold lies by the politicians. The freedom that we were supposed to gain in South Africa in 1994 has been betrayed by politicians who are only interested in enriching themselves and their families. So more people are getting richer as politicians and those who are living in shacks, who are working class, who wake up every day to make a living, continue to suffer. The living standards in South Africa have dropped, salaries have dropped, people are living in dire poverty, there is deep inequality, in fact we are the highest country where there is highest inequality in the world. Where the poorest of the poor who have to work out whether they have to eat today or they don't have food. And there are people who live in the affluent areas, in big buildings, who have rooms that they don't use and yet there are people who sleep on the streets. So we have a crisis in the country. The freedom that we were supposed to gain was betrayed by those who, political elites who took positions and left us to die in the manner that you are dying. So we are not free. We cannot celebrate fake freedom because what we have in this country is fake freedom. We continue to die in shacks settlements. We continue to suffer because of starvation. We continue, our children continue not to get better education. The health system in this country is very expensive for the poorest of the poor. People die on a daily basis because they can't get access to health. So you cannot say that you are free. And therefore the government of the day has not done enough, in fact has not done anything to address the inequalities that were caused by the apartheid era and the inequalities that still exist today where people are poor, you have the poorest that get between the poorest of the poor and those who are rich is very huge. And yet the people who build the economy, the people who work the land are the black majority. Those who are impoverished, the working class are the ones that suffer the consequences, but they are the ones who are building this economy of this country. It is unfortunate that after eight years into the so-called democracy, we still talk about women not being able to access toilets, water and sanitation. We are still talking about people not being able to access sanitation in this country. We are talking about people dying like flies in the informal settlement as a result of the floods, as a result of the fires. So the poorest of the poor, if they are not attacked by a brutal state, if they are not attacked by those who are fighting against those who speak for the poor, we are left to die in the manner that the people in Marshall Town have died. Absolutely. In this context, talking about the people who died in Marshall Town, like we said, many of them are immigrants. And it's quite unfortunate to see such a huge wave of xenophobia that has actually seized many parts of the country, people blaming migrants in all kinds of way for this disaster. And your organization is one of the few which has taken a very strong stand against this. In fact, I believe in your statement, it has termed this kind of an approach, pure fascism. And like you said, it is not the first time such attacks have taken place. We have seen previous instances of attacks on migrants from other African countries. So could you talk a bit about the politics that is kind of leading to this xenophobia or what really are the roots of xenophobia in South Africa? Yes, we have seen governments, when they fail to deliver for the poorest of the poor, when they fail to actually provide services for the working class and the poor in the country, they blame the other vulnerable group of people. And in this case, our brothers and sisters from the African continent, whom I see myself in them. We are only separated by rivers and mountains, but we are brothers and sisters. Our colors and then humanity means that we are actually from the same continent. And that we actually should recognize other achievement beings before anything else. But it is unfortunate that the government of the day is using some extremist fascism, where the poorest of the poor are now fighting amongst themselves for the cramps, while the capitalists are taking the biggest piece of the pie. And we are now made to believe that the brother from Malawi, the brother from Mozambique, the brother from Angola, the brother from Zambia is the one that is making me poor because he's taking my job, which is not the case. The case is we are poor because of a capitalist system that is only interested to take the resources of Africa and they take them away from us. And that's why we are poor. When people were short and killed, 34 miners were killed. All they were asking for was a living wage. After the colonialists came and took our land and they took our mineral resources, when we asked them to give us a living wage, what should they do? They respond with ammunition and they killed 34 workers. So that's how the government of the capitalist neoliberal system will work. It will ensure that it suppresses and oppresses the working class. And when the working class starts to speak out, you are short and killed in the manner that we are being killed. And if they're not using that, they will make us fight amongst ourselves and say that this is the reason why I'm suffering is because of my African brothers. So we are saying that we must build, it is only us, the poorest of the poor, that can build our own power, that we can speak about our problems. It is not the government of the day, because the government of the day has failed. Working together with our African brothers from Malawi, from everywhere else, we can bring liberation, the real struggles in our continent. We can bring real socialism in Malawi. We can bring real socialism in Mozambique. We can bring real socialism in Zimbabwe. And working together we must build a continent of humanity, not a continent of people being separated because they were born in other countries. These borders were not built by us. These borders were imposed by us, by the colonialism. And therefore we should not embrace them. We should not recognize them. In fact, we should do away with the borders. We are brothers, we are human beings, and we should treat each other with that. Because a brother from DRC, a sister from DRC is my sister. And one day I will go to DRC and I will expect to be welcomed in the manner that I should also welcome my brother who was coming from another country in this country. So this country we are saying, belongs to South Africans. It belongs to Africans. It belongs to migrants. It belongs to the working class. And if it needs to be, it is something that we will raise and fight for. We cannot be separated by capitalists who are taking resources from us and therefore divide us in a form of saying that this one belongs in this country. A border that were imposed by them in the first place. So an ANC government of that day, an illiterate system, is actually welcoming that and encouraging that. And we are seeing this very extreme right wing people who are mobilizing people for vote to say, we will get rid of the migrants if you vote for us. And the ANC is buying into that as well. So we, as Abbas Al-Basam Genolo are saying, we condemn any form of xenophobia. We condemn any form of discrimination. And we are saying that a human being is a human being wherever and whenever they find themselves. And we are not poor because somebody from another country just came to South Africa. We are poor because of capitalism. But capitalism is a way of not wanting, they don't want us to focus on the bigger picture. They are the ones who came and took our mineral resources. They want us to focus on this little thing and fight amongst ourselves. Absolutely. And finally, Abbas Al-Basam Genolo is also one of the most powerful social movements in South Africa because it is focused very extensively on the question of urban housing. You have an entire movement dedicated to it and a complete larger plan which talks more than just housing, but also talks about sovereignty, also talks about democracy in the complete sense of the term. So how do you sort of, what do you sort of see as the ways in which to address the crisis we are talking about, which for instance this fire exemplifies? We believe that the solutions of the working class and the poor will come from the working class and the poor themselves. It is when we are organized democratically from below as the working class that we can deal with the situation. We will be able to fight against any form of capitalism. We will be able to fight any form of neoliberalism and we will be able to fight any form of oppression and depression that you are facing if we are organizing ourselves from the below. So Basta Dibasam Genolo General Assemblies are a space for ordinary people to speak on the ground because we have been created and there's this perception that has been created by government and the elites that if you are poor you cannot think, if you are poor your state of mind has collapsed. Now we are saying the working class and the poor it is when we are organized ourselves because the government has failed us. Now we need to organize from below as the working class and the poor and speak about issues that are facing us and we are saying therefore our sovereignty should come from us and therefore we should make sure that we create food security for ourselves so that we do not starve so that we use land for the benefit of our people so that we don't use land for profits like the ANC government wants to do that. We want to do away with private property. We want to use land communally for the benefit of the community. No child must go to school on an empty stomach when we have land. So we continue to occupy land for those purposes for living, for food sovereignty so that our people can eat and we create a political school where we actually educate our people that they are not poor because of suddenly somebody from another country came to our country but they are poor because there's a system that creates them to be poor. There's a system that was created by colonialism and apartheid. There's a system that is there that continues to be perpetrated by the ANC government and therefore it is only when we organize from below that the people democratically speak out in their voices that we can actually create a socialist and communist society where we have people sharing whatever comes out of the land that we were working. So the power is on us as the working class to unite and speak in one voice and create a vanguard political party of the working class that would represent the interest of the working class that will be mandated by the working class that will take mandates from the people on the ground that will actually initiate what the people are saying because we don't want a top down type of approach that we are facing right now where government makes decisions on behalf of the people and not speak to the people. We want a government that will speak to the people and listen to the people and implement what the people have said and not implement what the capitalists are saying. So we want to create that. We want to organize people from below, the peasants, the working class and everyone else in the rural areas, in the urban areas, the urban poor must come together and organize. Let's come up with one voice and do away with the capitalist government that we are having and create a government that will benefit the people on the ground. Right. Thank you so much, Tapelo Mohapi, General Secretary of Avalali Basya Majandolo for talking about the reasons that led to the fire and I think highlighting the importance of both class, issues around class as well as pushing back very strongly against the kind of politics that is contributing to xenophobia at this point of time. Thank you so much for talking to us. Thank you very much comrades. Thank you to our African brothers. We are here for them and I'm calling on up all working class forces across the world. Real socialism is about equality, ensuring that everyone gets access to healthcare, everyone gets access to food, everyone, no child must go to school without food and better education. So therefore we must continue to fight this battle even if it means that we put our lives on the line. Many comrades have put their lives on the line for this cause and we should do the same until the next generations if we perish now before we realize real socialism. Our generation will thank us one day for having fought the good fight and this fight of equality, ensuring that better education, better healthcare for all and of course people having access to food, a country and the world where profit comes after the lives of the people. So land must be used for the benefit of the people for its social value and not for commercial purposes. We must not allow land to be used for profit for as long as people are still suffering in this country and the world. So socialism will build a better world, a better country, a better Africa. Thank you very much. Thank you so much and that's all we have time for today. Do keep watching People's Dispatch. Visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on all the social media platforms so that you can continue to see stories from South Africa, from other parts of the continent and the rest of the world.