‘Gatvol’ Capetonians stoke racial
The protests over a shortage of housing and land are pitting coloured people against their black neighbours
Land-related protests in Cape Town continued this week despite a zerotolerance approach from the city — and racial tensions between coloured and black people were being stoked by disaffected Mitchells Plain residents. “We’ve been here since before the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck and these people arrive here from the Eastern Cape,” Fadiel Adams proclaims from a piece of vacant land in Woodlands, Mitchells Plain, which residents occupied this week. “They have no claim to this land. They should be happy that we welcome them and have always welcomed them. But they don’t wanna share; they want it all.”
It’s Tuesday and the land is scattered with people hammering in wooden pegs and picking up rubber bullets — remnants of their clashes with the police on Monday afternoon.
A crowd forms around Adams as he speaks about an apparent government conspiracy against coloured people. “Coloured people are being told to shut up and sit down. We refuse to shut up and sit down. This government is waging a housing, employment and economic war on us. They won’t give it to us … So we will get as physical as they can, and this government knows nobody can wage a war like the Cape Flats [can].”
Adams is the administrator of the Facebook group Gatvol Capetonian, which has about 6 500 followers. He has been traversing Cape Town during May to advocate for coloured people to seize vacant land illegally.
He has found support for his views on black people since a video of his rant against residents of the nearby Siqalo informal settlement went viral on social media.
Adams helped to organise a protest by Mitchells Plain residents against Siqalo residents in which black and coloured people faced off at the beginning of May. Siqalo residents agitating for better services blocked the M7 highway, but were pelted with stones and shot at by Mitchells Plain residents unhappy that they were being prevented from going to work.
On Monday, shots were fired at the police as the anti-land invasion unit moved in to clear the patch of land. In the chaos that followed, at least five spaza shops, a petrol station and a car parts retailer were looted.
The following day, Adams arrived to give his support to Woodlands residents in a “Gatvol Capetonian” T-shirt, bearing the group’s slogan: “The only good politician is a dead politician.”
Woodlands is almost entirely made up of flats and semidetached houses, “and it’s rare to find a backyard without a wendy [shack]”, says resident Latifah Meyer. The area has a mostly coloured population and an unemployment rate of close to 50%.
The Gatvol Capetonian message resonated with many protesters this week, and some have even reached out to Adams’s team to secure land.
“I’m in contact with them. I sent a message last night to the admin of Gatvol Capetonian and asked: ‘Can I also put up a shack on the land, because we’re waiting for years?’ And he said yes, but we must protest,” says Gabieba Rademeyer.
Woodlands resident Sulaiman Johannes was hit in the leg by rubber bullets during the protests on Monday but the next day he hobbled back to the land to dig a hole to anchor his shack, his crutches lying next to him.
Johannes says the land occupation is based on legitimate demands and Gatvol Capetonian is merely trying to gain traction during a tense period in the area’s coloured suburbs.
“It’s not about being told to protest; we are really gatvol, my brother. You can see coloured people in other areas doing the same thing and it’s all because of Siqalo. There’s no way they can get houses and they are not even Kapenaars,” he says.