Desperation fuelled week of violence

A COMMUNITY desperate for services, development and answers.

This is what sparked a week-long bout of protests in Port Elizabeth’s northern areas, Helenvale community leader Samuel Davids says.

Davids, also an ANC branch leader in the area, was at pains to explain yesterday that the chaotic scenes playing out in Helenvale – which have since spread to other areas in the northern areas – were as a result of genuine service-delivery gripes.

One of the biggest issues centres on a housing project for backyard dwellers in Helenvale, which Davids said was meant to be built by the Mandela Bay Development Agency (MBDA) with the help of German funding from the KFW Development Bank.

Helenvale residents are demanding to know when the project will be implemented, fearing that the funding will be taken away by the Germans if it is not spent soon.

MBDA spokesman Luvuyo Bangazi said yesterday they were not aware of any funding withdrawal and that the agency planned to run a pilot project of building 50 housing units in Helenvale, but it needed the metro’s approval.

“Through the MBDA and SPUU [Safety and Peace through Urban Upgrading], we had planned to conduct a pilot project which would include the building of 50 housing units in the Helenvale areas as well as working with existing structures to look at ways of improving these structures,” Bangazi said.

While it was announced last year that 3 678 houses would be built in Helenvale at a cost of R582-million, he said this was an Eastern Cape Department of Human Settlements project.

Other grievances highlighted by residents since Friday last week are a lack of local SMME involvement in community projects, unemployment and that too few metro police officers are from the northern areas. They submitted a long

list of grievances to mayor Athol Trollip, who held meetings in Helenvale and Chatty this week, and he is expected to respond by this afternoon.

His spokesman, Sibongile Dimbaza, said he had undertaken to respond to the grievances by the end of business today as it needed input from various departments.

“The political leadership is focused on addressing the grievances to meet their deadline,” he said.

“Our intervention through the deployment of the metro police force affirms our commitment to [restoring] calm.

“Thus it would be prudent for us to allow the political leadership to give feedback to the Helenvale community as per their undertaking.

“However, we have reason to believe that the upheaval, following a successful engagement between [Trollip] and the community, is the creation of criminal or political elements who have inserted themselves in the matter to create chaos within the affected community.”

Yesterday, the ANC ripped into Trollip, saying there was no proper lighting and inferior infrastructure to handle sewage in “black areas”.

“The mayor has shown himself unable to lead the people . . . with a plan that inspires hope in the direction the city is taking,” ANC regional spokesman Gift Ngqondi said in a statement.

“Instead, we have seen him pander to his ilk who are intent on defending and extending the apartheid generational advantage of the white communities, at the cost of black communities in the townships and northern areas.”

Asked if the ANC had instigated the protests, Ngqondi denied it, saying they were “just supporting the communities like the DA did as an opposition”.

On what the ANC had done as the official opposition in the council to fight for the plight of the residents in the northern areas, ANC caucus leader Bicks Ndoni said: “We were going to raise some issues in the council meeting on May 5, but that meeting was postponed to the 23rd.

“We are definitely going to put [forward] a motion.

“We think people were given high expectations and their hopes were high.

“The serious issue is around budget cuts, especially in underprivileged areas.

“That thing is bound to backfire because there are a number of projects that have been cut in the budget.

“We have raised lots of issues in the committees, like in the joint budget and mayoral committee.

“Councillor Rory [Riordan] and I raised these things very sharply, about why they make cuts in the underprivileged areas.”