Group denounces mayor’s views on land invasions
MAYOR Dan Plato’s stance on informal settlements and land invasions has been denounced as “offensive and unacceptable” by a group of prominent Cape Town residents.
They include former Black Sash leader Mary Burton and writer Horst Kleinschmidt.
In reaction to a high court ruling barring the City from removing land invaders from public land, Plato said: “Unfortunately, there can be no instances where land invasion is an acceptable alternative, no matter the situation. The social consequences of land invasions are too devastating for this illegal act to be condoned.
“Many thousands of law-abiding residents are silently bearing the severe impact of land invasions – due to the unlawful actions of a relatively small group of people who occupy land illegally.”
The group, which describes themselves as “mainly white, middle-class, well-off residents living in suburbia”, wrote Plato an open letter in which they condemn his position in a letter he wrote Capetonians last week on the issue of land invasions.
“Your remarks, taken up by organisations such as the Rondebosch City Improvement District, are clearly aimed to warn and enlist the help of those well-off residents against the black invaders. There is nothing in your letter to suggest that you are consulting fully with leaders among those you accuse of organised invasion,” said the group.
“We think it is disingenuous for you to say that these invaders are undermining ‘law-abiding people who have waited patiently many years on the housing list’.
“Everyone knows that the housing list gets longer every year and that the chances of getting formal houses for the large majority of those waiting patiently, are nil. They will die before they receive their allocation.”
In response to the group’s letter, City spokesperson Jean-Marie de Waal Pressly said: “The devastating social consequences of land invasions affect all residents, of all income brackets and backgrounds.”
A joint media release by Premier Alan Winde and Human Settlements MEC Tertuis Simmers on Friday said the interim interdict handed down by the Western Cape High Court had set a precedent as to how all land owners handled illegal land invasions going forward.
“We understand that having a safe, dignified space to call home is
important. We also understand that in the current economic climate, there are many people who may not be able to afford to pay their rental… The Western Cape government does not support unlawful evictions – people who have been rendered financially vulnerable in the current climate deserve to be treated with respect and dignity… The Western Cape housing tribunal exists to settle disputes between tenants and landlords, and handles complaints regarding unfair practices and illegal evictions,” they said.
ANC city council chief whip Thandi Makasi blamed the City for the outbreak of land invasions. “The DA-controlled City of Cape Town has consistently and disgracefully failed to spend their budget allocation on human settlement and grants year in, year out,” said Makasi.
Mqapheli Bonono, spokesperson for housing rights group Abahlali baseMjondolo, said: “The ANC is not innocent. They pretend to support those who are evicted in Cape Town while they brutally evict poor people in Durban and Johannesburg. The DA and the ANC are both waging a brutal war against the poor.”
HOW is it possible that a clearly well-educated and reasonably intelligent man such as Yagyah Adams could write such unadulterated drivel in support of his belief in divine creation?
His logic is so childishly naive, so absurd it defies all logic.
He says if the same levels of argument were levelled at evolution it would collapse?
Well evolution is the most criticised, scrutinised, disputed scientific theory ever discovered.
No one disputes the theory of gravity, of relativity or any other scientific fact as much as they do evolution.
Yet despite the endless attempts to discredit it, the evidence in support of evolution is so profound, so irrefutable, you have to be blinded by faith or wilfully ignorant to do so.
All branches of science from geology, palaeontology, biology, zoology, cosmology and the science of DNA and genetics concur that evolution is a scientific fact.
As for your claim that the flood myth is true because the ark has been found on a mountain in Turkey: the recent find of some pieces of wood on Mt Ararat don’t resemble anything like a boat never mind one big enough to accommodate a pair of every animal on the planet.
And please explain if the flood myth is true, how did Noah and his small family repopulate the Earth some 4 800 years ago? There must have been incest taking place for that to happen.