Con Court slams Operation Clean Sweep as an act of "humiliation and degradation"
The Constitutional Court today handed down a judgment explaining its reasons for ordering the City of Johannesburg to allow informal traders to return to their stalls in the inner city of Johannesburg on 5 December last year. Evoking the spirit of Nelson Mandela, the Acting Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke condemned Operation Clean Sweep as an act of "humiliation and degradation" which rendered thousands of people, and their children, destitute.
The Court expressed concern that the City had described the eviction of several thousand informal traders as "convenient" and instead characterised Operation Clean Sweep as "indiscriminate" and "flawed", finding that the City had "gone about achieving its objectives in flagrant disregard of the traders' rights".
The City resisted the traders' application to be restored to their stalls on the sole ground that it was not urgent, and said that they could claim damages later for any loss caused by the evictions. Moseneke ACJ found that this attitude "may well border on the cynical".
Nomzamo Zondo, attorney for the South African Informal Traders Forum (SAITF), the first applicant in the case, said: "The City's conduct was an attack on the dignity of thousands of poor people who work very hard to make an often meagre living. The Constitutional Court was right to condemn the City's conduct as demeaning, cynical and, above all, unlawful. The City, as an organ of state, sets an example. When it breaks the law, it encourages chaos. When it treats the poor as something less than human, it encourages others to do so. When it commits wanton acts of violent eviction, it renders the poor that much more vulnerable to humiliation and degradation."
At the time of the judgment, the City had not apologised to the traders or returned the stock that was unlawfully confiscated during Operation Clean Sweep.
Read more about the case and find all the papers here:
Read the Constitutional Court judgment (4 April 2014) here
Statement issued by Nomzamo Zondo, attorney at SERI, April 4 2014
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