Ayanda Kota, who founded the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) in 2009, has died of cancer. He was born in Grahamstown in 1976, now Makhanda, and died here. It was in Makhanda and Cape Town that he dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of poor people. He went to Nombulelo Secondary School in Makhanda’s Joza location.
A politics is rising whose function is not simply to win elections but to rally people around issues that impact on the quality of our lives and diminishes our collective humanity.