Costs ruling against City in Strandfontein camp case will place additional financial burden on residents
POWER is corrosive. It actively negates accountability by being opposed to any kind of monitoring. Those who are in power don’t pause to consider the legality or consequences of their actions.
That is what happened when the City rushed ahead in May 2020 to institute proceedings against the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) as the Argus reported. It did not want to brook any examination of human rights violations at the camp that was set up for homeless people at Strandfontein. It won the interdict but withdrew it a month later.
The C19 People’s Coalition was right in accusing the City of fruitless and wasteful expenditure. The City certainly spends a lot of money on legal battles and often not without success. The City has many lawyers in its employ. Surely, they should have seen right away that any abnegation of human rights would not stand constitutional muster.
I wish that we, as minority parties, were better represented in the council. We would then have been in a better position to demand consultation and prevent fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
At present I am being blocked from getting information from the executive mayor regarding travel claims by councillors during the lockdown. A senior official let slip that some claims were inconceivably large. I submitted a written question, but the mayor is not willing to reveal the claims for travel that were lodged by councillors. Thereby hangs a tale.
The fact that Judge Siraj Desai rebuked the City for the way it treated SAHRC monitors at the Strandfontein site for homeless people is an indictment of the City.
We live in a rights-based society and the rights of everyone, the most marginalised in particular, have to be upheld. For City officials to be told that the City’s arguments lacked merit and that their action in trying to muzzle freedom of expression was appalling, reflects poorly on them.
Bad as that is for those who took the decision, it is bad for the rest of us. There is reputational damage here that is demeaning to all of us, and then there is the legal costs that come with the judgment that the people of Cape Town will have to carry, that must infuriate us.
We must all join with Judge Desai in condemning the ill-conceived move of asking for an interdict and now having to pay the costs of the judgment going against the City.