Schreiner Baduza (born 1909) was a South African activist who organized squatting actions in the Alexandra township in the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. He was forcibly relocated away from Alexandra and when he returned became a church minister.

Early life

Schreiner was born in the village of Bikana in the Transkei bantustan on 18 July 1909. After working as a miner, he married and moved to Alexandra township in the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality.[1] He set up a business making theft protection for windows.[2]

Activism

In 1935, Baduza set up the Bantu Tenants Association in Alexandra.[1] He knew Nelson Mandela, who later described him in a letter from prison as one of his best friends from that time.[3] Baduza became a squatter leader like Oriel Monongoaha in Orlando West and Abel Ntoi in Pimville.[4] He was reluctant to become a leader and it ruined his business, but it followed on from his activism supporting bus boycotts and tenant movements.[2]

In 1946, Baduza made several attempts to organise informal settlements on vacant land. He was arrested on the first land invasion and for the third organized over 600 families to squat in Orlando.[2] The squatters were then relocated back to Alexandra and he later set up a tent village in Alexandra to protest the national housing crisis.[2][5] Baduza was then himself forcibly relocated to the Hammanskraal and from there moved back to the Transkei, before returning to Soweto. He was not permitted to work as a housing activist and so he became a church minister.[1]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 "The story of Schreiner Baduza". Learn & Teach. 3 May 1982. Retrieved 20 October 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Stadler, A. W. (1979). "Birds in the Cornfield: Squatter Movements in Johannesburg, 1944-1947". Journal of Southern African Studies. 6 (1): 93–123. doi:10.1080/03057077908708008. ISSN 0305-7070. JSTOR 2636773.
  3. ↑ Lodge, Tom (2006). Mandela: A critical life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192805683.
  4. ↑ Lissoni, Arianna (2012). One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Liberation Histories Today. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. ISBN 978-1868145737.
  5. ↑ Curry, Dawne Y. (2012). Apartheid on a Black isle: Removal and resistance in Alexandra, South Africa. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 26. ISBN 978-1137023094.
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