Fasting against the plaza
CONVINCED she was being fed lies about the Chapman’s Peak toll road, Bronwen Lankers-Byrne decided there was only one thing left to do: stop eating.
The 60-year-old former Buddhist nun staged a 15-day hunger strike opposite the building site of the new toll plaza. “People were wondering what to do about the plaza. I said I’m up for doing something radical,” she said this week. “I got a headache at first; it was very hot. But after three days I became very focused.”
Her protest centred attention on the toll plaza office, built despite an outcry from local residents.
Lankers-Byrne did not have to wait long to raise attention. A curious cyclist passing by on day one turned out to be Western Cape premier Helen Zille. Lankers-Byrne gave the premier a piece of her mind: “I said, ‘Helen, I’m on a hunger strike and this is day one.’ ”
“She said: ‘Well, don’t do a Bobby Sands.’ ” Sands was the Irish Republican Army prisoner who died after a hunger strike.
Two weeks later, she was 9kg lighter and decided to handcuff herself to the construction site. Then she called Jacob Zuma’s presidential hotline for people with concerns and complaints. “I just got shunted from one number to another and eventually I ran out of airtime.”
Lankers-Byrne finally left the site after the developers got a high court order against her. —