Anti-eviction forces, accompanied by the City Police and SAPS, invaded the community at Hangberg in Hout Bay on Tuesday 21 September to demolish poor people's homes. Then the community held a post-mortem meeting on Thursday 23 September to discuss what had taken place.
Different organisation, political parties, trade union members, religious groups and various associations came to bandage the wounds of this society. They all expressed dismay at the brutality shown by police, reminiscent of the apartheid era. Many people shared their painful stories that day, and in anger vowed to recover the dignity the City of Cape Town robbed them of and to take the future of their own lives to their own hands.
Fr Frans the popular Anglican Church priest in the community said the church is the bone for the suffering flesh of the people, especially the poor. He narrated how at some stage they demanded access to the police armour-plated Nyala and they were refused on some flimsy cock and bull story of the hydraulics not working properly. The priest had information that the police had a fourteen year old girl inside the vehicle, a fact that was categorically denied by the police officers in the vehicle. Eventually the vehicle was opened, and true as the rising sun, there was the girl scared as a trapped bird and looking as though she had been abused.
There were other testimonies of the police abusing the elderly in their homes and taking them to gaol on pretentious charges of public violence. Most people who were caught out by police fire were those who were not part of the protest, some even lost their eyes trying to protect school children. People vowed not to allow the government officials to divide them but pledged to stand together as a community united.
The sad part is that what that day has managed to do was to first divide the community of Hout Bay, and then initiate a muted race war. For instance, when the violence subsided on Wednesday, Hangberg community residents saw white folks bring tea, coffee and pastries for the police whilst they sat in their casspirs, nyalas and vans. This disgusted the brutalised community who felt invaded and humiliated by the police.
Secondly, the invasion stripped the community of Hangberg of their right to shelter, threatened their health and further interrupted their right to schooling. These rights are all guaranteed in our constitution, yet were freely violated by the city officials. Hence the Community are now calling for the National Minister of Co-operative Government, Shiceka, to institute a judicial inquiry and subpoena whoever was involved in planning, coordinating and executing the invasion to the Hangberg on Tuesday. It was obvious that this was meticulously planned operation, nothing happened by chance that day. The South African people deserve to know the true motivates of that invasion and not be fobbed off by the false excuses of the Premier regarding firebreaks and alleged interference with mountain rain water run-off.
As I read the media reports on what happened in Hangberg I was surprised at how none of the real incidences that happened that day were reported. It is not that the journalists were not there, I know they were, and others even brave enough to stand on the side of the community that was fired at by the police. But very few to none of these incidences came out from the main media reports. Why not? What was the editing policy of the newspapers that covered the story?
It is well known in Cape Town that the DA and the newspapers with editorial offices within shouting distance of the Municipality and Provincial Parliament enjoy an extremely unobjective, mutually beneficial relationship. It is this "friendship" that lies at the heart of the unquestioned statements of the Premier, that the Hangberg is a community held to ransom by a few drug-pushing "Rastas", who are now extending their kingdoms to the 70 odd shacks under attack by this Metro army. And the fact that the city of Cape Town can blatantly lie by saying it demolished only vacant shacks when there are pictures everywhere of people carrying their belongings from the demolished shacks. The main stream media outlets in this do need to seriously question their morality and how damaged their psyche towards the marginalised actually is.
I don't care to politicise this issue, but am trying to question the professionalism of the media who like to pass themselves as protectors of freedom and constitution. What happened that day?
As far as I'm concerned it is the media that gives credence to the ridiculous proposals like the MTA. It is high time the media takes a hard look at itself too and the method of their operations. Perhaps it should instigate its own inquiry into the reporting of that incident, and if that is found to have been unbiased and accurate, then the editors have to somehow do some soul searching, that is if they want us to take them seriously about their claims of impartiality.
In any event, the Premier's claims and name calling in relation to the homeless members of the Hangberg were exposed by the decision of the community to stand united to protect and demand their constitutional rights. Hardly the reaction of a community freed from the tyranny of the drug lords! Obviously the Premier was trying to embark on a divide and rule apartheid tactics. Sadly, the media does not appear to be as sophisticated as the community in breaking down this propaganda.
How easy the Premier forgets; only a few decades ago we marched with her to KTC to stop police demolishing people informal houses, now she is the one treating people like dirt; things power will do to your psyche and shift your loyalties.
On Tuesday Hangberg looked like a warzone: bricks, rocks and bullet casing littered the roads, smouldering tyres and branches blocking access. Has the Premier forgotten that treating poor people like this is a crime against humanity? How paradoxical that she of all people now is at forefront of delegitimising the realisation of the constitutional rights of the poor when she is always talking about protecting the constitution.
The Premier says she is justified in halting the upgrading of the area and provision of housing to the people of Hangberg as they did not keep their promise of not growing their footprint towards the Sentinel Mountain. But this argument is conceptually fallacious! How can you justify withholding the provision of housing further on because the homeless have been forced to fend for themselves? Where and when has any housing development been done in the area? The last if I remember well was in 1992. What upgrades have been done here in the last few years? Only those undertaken by the residents themselves, who have placed Wendy Houses in all the available spots amongst the existing development, which has led to the use of the mountainside in the last year or so. What infrastructural developments have been ploughed in the area? Even the schools are falling apart, nevermind the unmaintained council housing stock.
There is more municipal land ready for development and for building decent houses for people in Hout Bay, why has it not been utilised? Or I forget, most of it was sold to rich private developers and the trend continues, but there is none to build houses and schools for the poor. Also what of the unused factory land at the entrance to the Harbour area? Why is this being sold to private developers and not the Municipality?
The municipality has in the past three years or so been looking for land to build a second High School for the swollen population of Hout Bay. Despite objections from the community, the DA led governments want to site this school within the black area known as Imizamo Yethu. The people of Imizamo Yethu have strenuously attempted to prevent that, asking that the school be sited in the main Hout Bay area so that it will be accessed by all the children in the area (knowing from the experience of the High School in the Harbour area that under-maintained and marginalized they do not want the same thing).
Imagine also the shock the community felt when they heard that the Municipality Leases the perfect spot for a High School in a central location, to the privately run Christian School! If this does not indicate the clear lack of political will from the DA government to prioritise the issues that affect poor people, what will? Yet the concerns of the rich white business and property are sprung to immediately - bringing with it security forces to threaten and terrorise people.
It is okay for rich mansions to climb any mountain they wish to climb in the city of Cape Town and firebreaks extended according to will, but once poor people dare to do the same they are labelled "criminals", "drug lords" and accused of holding law abiding community members to ransom.
Hout Bay is the perfect area to be an excellent pilot project for South Africa's first mixed tenure and integration of classes. Everyone knows that the most successful communities are those where people co-exist. But South Africa and its class-racial mentality must have every residential box filled with only the same type of house and the same class of people in a divisive patchwork quilt approach.
The city can easily build apartment complexes in the area that will also accommodate some of the low-income families within the same buildings. This model for income redistribution has been highly successful in other countries like the Republic of Ireland.
This tendency of pushing poor people around all the time and loading them out to peripheral impoverished situations while mechanisms of solutions to help and uplift them are available and viable is unfair. Everyone has the right to be positioned where they want, especially if it is closer to their means of earning a living, like these fishermen at Hout Bay.
*Mphuthumi Ntabeni is a researcher of COPE in the Western Provincial Parliament and writes here in his personal capacity as a resident of Hout Bay.
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