Ayanda Ngila 1992–2022

Brutally assassinated on Tuesday 8 March 2022, in eKhanana due to his involvement in the struggle for land and socialism.

Ayanda Ngila (praise name: Jola) was born on 28 February 1992 in Port St. John’s, a town on the wild coast in the Eastern Cape. He grew up in a village called Emtalala, which lies within Port St. Johns, where he attended junior primary school and senior primary school. In 2008 his maternal uncle Sthembiso Ngila invited him to come and stay with him in Durban so that he could get “better high school education in Durban”. In about 2018 his uncle married, so Ayanda, now an adult, felt that it would be better for him to find his own place to stay in Durban: but this was a challenging search, because in Durban “you need to have money and employment, so that you can pay rent for any accommodation”. Thus in 2018, when people moved to occupy the site that is now known as eKhanana Commune – named after the biblical Promised Land – he decided to join them. Around the time when Ayanda Ngila moved to the occupation site it was still using the name of the area, Cato Crest. Attempts were made to remove them by various means, including ongoing violent repression.

Quote from Ayanda Ngila who, at the time of his death, was the Deputy Chairperson of the eKhanana Commune: “the Local Councilor and his supporters burnt people’s homes: he called our homes imikhukhu/shacks. To us this is our homes. We are not invading land; we are occupying land that is not used.”