Residents fed up with roadside encampment
WYNBERG residents are up in arms about an encampment that is home to about 20 people at the Gabriel Road circle that refuses to disappear, no matter how many times the City removes the squatters.
Each time residents complain to the City, the authorities clear the area, only for the homeless people who live in the encampment to return and rebuild the very next day.
Asked what options were left to them, Wynberg Residents and Ratepayers Association (WRRA) spokesperson Phillippa Duncan suggested added vigilance and reporting any incidents.
“We have also asked residents to not deliver food or other items to the camp so as not to encourage these vagrants to stay.
“There are numerous feeding programmes in the area so it is completely unnecessary to continue to feed them on site,” she said.
Duncan said there had been recent discussions on the WRRA WhatsApp group to self-fund the fencing off of the area.
“Residents are getting desperate to see something done,” she said.
Spokesperson for the City’s Law Enforcement, Wayne Dyason, said: “The relocation of street people is done voluntarily. Street people cannot be forced to relocate into night shelters or to safe spaces.”
Dyason said they kept going to the encampment in response to complaints filed by residents who say the law is being broken.
“However, the police cannot act if the person who witnessed the criminal act is not willing to provide a statement of what they witnessed,” he said.
The longest-serving resident of the encampment is Ryan Manuel.
He refused to have his photograph taken, saying he and his wife escaped to the encampment after being terrorised and beaten by members of a gang who were trying to recruit them. They didn’t want to be identified.
Manuel said during the last raid on the encampment, the police told him that there had been accusations that they were running a brothel at the encampment, selling drugs and providing a haven for burglars.
“But they have never found any evidence of this. They have never even arrested someone here in possession of drugs,” he said.
Manuel said he was aware that the City offered alternatives such as shelters, but most people don’t want to be in them as they fear losing their freedom because of all the strict rules.