Protest about services flares up

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By MATT MEDVED

It began with a single cardboard box set alight in front of traffic on Mew Way.

The protest flared up last night as Khayelitsha residents heaped trash upon the growing fire and danced around the flames, demanding access to housing and service delivery.

“We need houses and we need them now,” said Aniso Achmat, running past a second trash pile that had just been torched by a gang of fleeing boys.

Police officers holding shotguns had to patrol the street to keep order while the flames were extinguished.

“My baby has asthma and she cannot breathe when she sleeps because of the smells coming from here,” said Kanyisa Barumame, opening a metal box on the roadside to reveal the filthy public outhouse within. “We need proper toilets before more of our children become sick.”

Virginia Glosson nodded and tightened her grip on the shoulder of one of the myriad children crowded around the road.

“We have no house and no toilets,” she said. “My children have to go out and do their business next to the cars passing by. It is not right.”

Through the tight trash-ridden corridors leading away from the chaos of the street, Elvis Monwuapisi huddled with his family next to a bonfire for warmth. He gave a doleful look at a massive puddle in the middle of the road and said his house was located on the other side.

“My house is still completely flooded, there is so much water in the room,” he said. “But I can’t even reach it to bail it out because the water is blocking the road. No one can pass through.”

Monwuapisi said he had waited for assistance from the Department of Disaster Management that never came.

“No one has come to help us,” he said. “We are on our own out here.”

Barumame pointed towards a deep pond lying in between sprawling piles of rubbish and scattered grassy patches, shaking her head.

“Ever since the rains, that water has been overflowing,” she said. “It is very dangerous and the children keep going there to play.

“Recently, people who want to rob and rape have been hanging out there too.”

Barumame also motioned to a scrap metal shack perched at the base of a rotting mountain of garbage.

“The family that stays there has a child who is only one or two months old,” she said. “The baby is sick because they live in the trash, it is not right.”

She sighed and slammed a nearby door, causing the muddy water at the base of the shack to splash up against her leg.

“Our homes are flooded, no one will help us and we do not have a council here to represent us,” she said.

“This is how we must make our voices heard.”

Thousands march over slow delivery

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By MATT MEDVED and ZARA NICHOLSON

Among more than a thousand ANC supporters who protested against the DA-led city council’s “failure to deliver services” was a wheelchair-bound Khayelitsha resident, furious that her water had been cut even after she had told the city that she received a disability grant.

ANC leaders, members and supporters took to the streets in the city centre yesterday with posters slamming DA policies on evictions, water cuts and high rates. The ANC said these policies were detrimental to poor communities.

The protest comes after the City of Cape Town sent pink letters, a final warning, to residents asking that they pay their municipal bills or their water or electricity supplies would be cut off.

Maggie Mogwera, 53, from A section in Khayelitsha, joined the huge crowd in her wheelchair as the protesters marched from Keizersgracht to the civic centre on the Foreshore to hand over a memorandum to Helen Zille, mayor and DA leader.

“Yesterday when I came home my water was off,” Mogwera said.

“I feel like Helen (Zille) is taking my rights away from me because if she is taking away my water, then I have no rights, that is why I am marching.

“I made arrangements after they sent me a pink letter and they know that I am living on a grant.

“This is the second time my water was cut off.”

Mogwera has been receiving a grant since 2000.

Her letter showed that she owed the city about R36 000.

Protesters reached the civic centre around lunchtime and were met by a heavy police presence.

The steps leading to Zille’s office were barricaded with with barbed wire two metres high.

The ANC provincial leadership, Premier Ebrahim Rasool and leaders of supporting organisations spoke to the crowd before their memorandum was received and signed by Dan Plato, the Mayco member for housing.

The memorandum said that under the DA-rule, the city had issued 455 000 pink letters threatening to cut off water and electricity supplies.

Most of these had been sent to poor people.

The memorandum also said that the city had cut water to 46 594 homes and electricity to 16 840.

“With such high rates and service charges, the aged, unemployed and poor simply cannot afford to live in dignity. If these are examples of your liberal values and so called professionalism in government, we reject them,” the memorandum said.

It also called on the city to ensure that evictions, water and electricity cuts “which target the poor” be stopped immediately.

Philippi resident James Miwnie, 47, said: “I have gone for three months without water and I was served one of those pink letters, my rates have gone up.

“I want to stand for my rights for a place to stay, water to drink and energy to cook my supper.”

Miwnie said he was struggling to feed and clothe his six children since he lost his job in publishing seven years ago, and had taken to selling sweets on the streets of Cape Town.

“Helen Zille must drop the costs because most people are unemployed and the rest are sick.”

In response to the march, the city’s multiparty government issued a statement saying that several of the points raised by the ANC march organisers “contain false allegations”.

“The complaints around service delivery are hypocritical, given that we have improved on the ANC’s previous performance in Cape Town,” the statement said.

ANC leads march against DA-led city’s ‘failure to deliver’

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By MATT MEDVED, ZARA NICHOLSON and MURRAY WILLIAMS

More than a thousand ANC supporters gathered in the city earlier today for a march against the DA-led city council’s failure to deliver basic services.

Protesters, many of whom had arrived on a dozen Golden Arrow buses, carried banners slamming DA policies around evictions, water cuts and high rates, which the ANC said were aimed at poor communities.

Marchers moved down Keizersgracht shouting “Viva, ANC, Viva” and “Away, Zille, Away”.

Representatives from community organisations, Cosatu, SA National Civic Organisation and the SA Communist Party all took part in the march.

ANC chairman for the standing committee on finance and economic affairs Garth Strachan said the marchers were intent on handing over a memorandum to mayor and DA leader Helen Zille’s office at the civic centre.

The memorandum stated that the DA election manifesto had promised to address the problems of housing, unemployment, poor services and high tariffs for service charges

“Instead under the DA rule, the city has issued 455 000 pink letters threatening to cut off water and electricity supplies, mainly to poor families and evict the same families from their homes,” the memorandum stated.

Magwaza Zodwa of the ANC Women’s League said: “We are here because of the water cuts and the pink letters that Zille gave our people.

“It’s the poorest of the poor being affected,” she said.

“This is about service delivery and the DA has made empty promises.”

But Zille has accused the ANC of inciting an anti-city protest by propagating lies.

“I’ve received repeated reports today that the ANC is mobilising people on the basis of completely false information,” Zille said.

“I’ve received a report from the Nyanga area saying the ANC is going around with loud hailers saying water is going to be cut off for two weeks, and in other areas that we’re going to remove people and break down their shacks. They’re inventing stories … It’s complete and utter lies.

“I’ve also seen a copy of their pamphlet, and it’s one untruth after the other,” she said.

“It’s an indication of how desperate the ANC is and how they will do anything to return to the policy of mass resistance, rather than work through the structures and procedures of the council.

“Last night they tipped out dustbins in Khayelitsha so they could claim that there’s no service delivery there,” Zille continued. “But it’s complete and utter lies. Everyone in Khayelitsha will tell you how much cleaner it is since we’ve taken over.”

But Heinz Park resident Patricia Pekeur, 62, said she had joined the protest because the city had raised her rates and had cut her water.

While Patrick Lunguza from Khayelitsha lamented the fact that all the graveyards in township areas were full, while cemeteries in white areas were too expensive.

“Where can we bury our dead if the city does not respect our people?” Lunguza said.

Earlier DA provincial leader Theuns Botha blasted the planned protest as “unnecessary”.

“The ANC should rather spend its energy and efforts towards improving standards of governance and service delivery in the few municipalities it still governs,” he said.