“Ngingashiyi ngaphandle oproducer bethu okuyibna abaqinisekisa ukuthi sisakaza into eyiyona ngithi engathi uNkulunkulu umdali wezulu nomhlaba engasibamba asibophe ngebhandi likamoya asenze sibe moya munye njalo ukuze siyiphathe ngobunono lento. Isifiso sami ukuyibona iqhubeka lento, ukhule umculo wamabhinca”. It is only because God lovingly paid this ransom that mankind has the prospect of enjoying what Adam and Eve lost ​ — life forever on a paradise earth . ​ — Revelation 21 : 3 - 5 . Abahlali grew out of a protest organised from the Kennedy Road settlement. On 18 March 2005 bulldozers started digging up a piece of land next to the Kennedy Road settlement which had long been promised for housing. People discovered from the workers on the site that this wasn’t the beginning of the long promised housing development but that a brick factory was being built. They gathered on the promised land, stopped the construction and asked the local councillor to come and explain what was happening. He arrived with the police and demanded the arrest of his constituents. They are, he said, criminal. That night there was a mass meeting in the settlement. After long and careful discussion a new course of action was decided on. Early the next morning a few hundred people barricaded a nearby 6 lane road with burning tyres and held it against the riot police for 4 hours suffering 14 arrests. Alfred Mdletshe told Fred Kockott, the fi rst journalist on the scene, that ‘We are tired of living and walking in shit. The council must allocate land for housing us. Instead they are giving it to property developers to make money’.