City must account for Clifton beach incident

THE City of Cape Town (CoCT) needs to account for what happened at Clifton beach on Sunday, December 23 when a paramilitary private security company, Professional Protective Alternatives (PPA), acted unlawfully by asking beachgoers to leave the beach after eight in the evening.

Whatever their reasoning, short of an emergency situation, this was a clear contravention of the National Environmental Management: Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) Act 36 of 2014.

From media reports and contradicting statements from the CoCT and PPA it is obvious that the paramilitary company was acting on tacit agreement with the city’s security arrangements.

The CoCT is denying this yet we’ve not seen it institute criminal charges against the company. The Camps Bay Ratepayers’ Association, alleged to be the ones paying the PPA, has distanced itself from the company’s actions too.

If the company acted with any form of arrangement with the CoCT, then the city must explain under which laws was the arrangement made.

We urge the relevant national departments and Parliament to prioritise the process of bringing the CoCT to book should it emerge that it acted illegally.

We ask also that they put under scrutiny and sharp review the by-laws passed by all municipalities, in particular the CoCT, to make sure they’re in line with our constitutional imperatives.

Such actions of blocking people’s access to public spaces were always going to produce a vehement outcry from people, in whom the experiences of apartheid are still raw as an open wound.

We commend those people, in Cape Town in particular, for being vigilant in guarding their human rights.

Such actions of pure classism and racial profiling by private and public security personnel around the Atlantic Seaboard are common, but should never be tolerated by poor people.

Cape Town is notorious for racial incidences during holidays, something that should bring shame to most of us who love this city.

On the other hand we’re glad when the whole world is exposed to racism that still abounds within this city. Black people, in particular from other cities, towns and provinces, feel as though they’ve travelled on a time machine into the 1980s when they visit Cape Town.

Each year we get promises from authorities to clamp down on the scourge of racism.

Yet it has become so endemic that it is the very city administrators who are now bringing segregation in by the back door. M NTABENI

UDM Chairperson, Western Cape

Racism has become so endemic that it is the very city administrators who are now bringing segregation in by the back door