ANCYL, DA clash over NGO use of hall
MAYOR Patricia de Lille is being accused by the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) of allowing internal DA “factional battles” to undermine the work of an NGO working in Hanover Park.
At the end of the month the Hanover Park Women’s Forum (HPWF) will have to move out of the Hanover Park Community Hall where it has been based for the past eight years.
But the ANCYL says the DA 47 councillor, Antonio van der Rheede, wants to give the office space to the Ward Forum, while De Lille prefers that her “pet project”, the Women’s Ambassadors, be placed there.
ANCYL provincial chairperson Muhammad Khalid Sayed said: “It is clear that the city led by Patricia de Lille is not on the same page as the provincial government led by Hellen Zille.
“We discovered that the city does not have a record of the work done by the HPWF but that the Province’s Community Safety Department is working closely with them.
“Van der Rheede had them kicked out by the end of the month and they were told to re-apply for offices after a cool-off period of a month after pressure and protests by the HPWDF, an umbrella body for 15 community organisations.
“It is clear DA is playing politics with a community forum that has been in existence since 2003.”
The Women’s Ambassadors was an undemocratic structure, and was being imposed on Hanover Park while the HPWF have been at the forefront of fighting gangsterism, Sayed added.
But Van der Rheede responded that the HPWP was not the only organisation which had been affected.
“It is unfortunate that the Hanover Park Women’s Forum has chosen to take a process that’s affecting many different organisations to create the impression that they are being targeted.
“I reject the allegations made against me and call on the forum to follow proper channels to raise concerns about my conduct,” he said.
“The reality is that this is an administrative process over which I as a councillor have no power or influence.”
He said the regularisation of community facilities would be to the benefit of the thousands of residents in his ward and would level the playing fields for the many organisations that had contacted him, seeking answers about why certain organisations had access to the facilities at the exclusion of others.
De Lille echoed Van der Rheede, her spokesperson Pierrine Leukes saying: “The Hanover Park Women’s Developmental Forum was acting as the custodian of the community hall. This was unfair to the rest of the community, that the hall is intended for.”