Obed Mlaba

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The Police Crush Another Demonstration Against Obed Mlaba by the Shackdwellers' Movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, 28 September, 2007

Obed Mlaba is the mayor of the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, which includes Durban, the second most populous city in South Africa.

He was born in 1943 in Ntambamhlope near Estcourt in KwaZulu-Natal. He holds an MBA in Strategic Marketing Management from the International Management Centre (United Kingdom). ^[1] He gained extensive experience in human resources and business development while working for the sugar firm Huletts, which developed out of the colonial plantation economy and remains the largest land owner in the city, and later at South African Breweries. He entered local government in 1994 as an ANC member and was appointed Chair of the Executive Committee of the Durban Metropolitan Council 1995. Mlaba was elected Metropolitan Mayor (ANC) in July 1996. He has completed two terms of office and is currently serving his third term.

[edit] Criticism

In late 2005 the New York Times reported that shack dwellers in the Foreman Road shanty town had burnt an effigy of Mlaba after they had been attacked by the police and illegally banned from staging a march on the mayor to protest against his housing policy.^[2] A few days after the march Mlaba called a press conference at which he announced that a large amount of Huletts (now trading as Moreland) land would soon be made available for a R10 billion housing project for shack dwellers.^[3] Moreland denied that there was such a project and later went on to announce a commercial project on the land. Shortly after the march, the Durban press reported that Mlaba had instructed Professor Makgoba, the vice-chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, to fire the three academics that has been working with the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. Two of the three were soon forced out of the university and the third was fired some months later.^[4] The South African constitution and law make any eviction of an unlawful occupier, such as a shack dweller, undertaken without an order of the court an unlawful and criminal act. A report by to the United Nations the Centre for Housing Rights in Geneva in early 2008 claims that the City routinely evicts shack dwellers without court orders.^[5]

Since 2005 international human rights reports have regularly condemned abuses against shack dwellers in Durban including the illegal banning of protests and illegal police violence against peaceful protests. ^[6].

In September 2007 thousands of shack dwellers were peacefully marching on Mayor Mlaba to protest against his policy of expelling the poor from the city were violently attacked by the police without warning or provocation. The police attack was strongly condemned by South African church leaders and by international human rights organisations.^[7]

In early 2008 the United Nations expressed serious concern about the treatment of shack dwellers in Durban. ^[8] At the same time the Mercury newspaper reported that both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International were investigating Human Rights abuses against shack dwellers by the City Government of which Mlaba is the head.^[9]