Squatters claim police brutality

BACKYARDERS displaced when new housing units went up at the N2 Gateway are again homeless after they were forced off a piece of land they illegally occupied along Voortrekker Road in Kensington on the weekend.

On Friday the group built their shacks on the land opposite the Maitland cemetery, but on Saturday the City of Cape Town’s law enforcement officers tore down the shacks and allegedly chased and beat them for refusing to leave the area.

They also claimed that when they went to report the officers, police at the Maitland police station had allegedly refused to open a case docket.

Anastacia Malithi, who spoke on behalf of the backyarders, said: “We told (law enforcement officers) there are other shacks here (east and west of the open land in question – namely Phola Park and Olympic Park informal settlements). Why do they chase us away?

“They (allegedly) said we must not ask them those things and they started hitting us.

“They beat the husband of Nosakhe Sinxo on the arm and it was swollen.

“Another one of us, a guy, they beat on the finger and we started running away.

“When they beat us, they said ‘we don’t want baboons and k ##### s here’ because they don’t listen.

“They said we must go home. We asked them where must we stay.

“We have nowhere to stay. We managed to run away from them when they beat us.”

Malithi said the reason why they decided to erect shacks there was that their landlords had evicted them because flats were to be built.

The City’s director for Safety and Security Richard Bosman denied the assaults, saying: “These people are lying about their possessions that were allegedly taken by our law enforcement officers. There were no possessions taken by law enforcement and no assaults.”

Responding to the allegations, Bosman said: “My staff took pictures and there was nothing in those structures. They had not yet stayed in their structures.

“Yesterday when our staff was on the scene and found people erecting (illegal) structures, our staff dismantled them.

“The structures were unoccupied and people were in the process of putting them up.”

Bosman said the land in question is private land belonging to the Nadabeni Trust.

He said there was a court interdict on that land, prohibiting people from building or erecting any structures.

Picture: RAPHAEL WOLF HOMELESS: Former evicted Joe Slovo residents January Kunzula, Nosakhe Sinxo, Nomakaya Petersen, Anastacia Malithi and Yoliswa Mtumtum take shelter behind a makeshift barrier after they were stopped from building shacks opposite Maitland Cemetery at the...