Cape for Capeys, says Gatvol leader
● For the man behind the “shutdown Cape Town protest”, everything is white, coloured and black.
If Fadiel Adams, 44, the self-styled leader of Gatvol Capetonian, had his way, he would banish everyone “not born in the Western Cape pre-1994” to the Eastern Cape and Limpopo.
Adams’s movement organised the protest that produced 45 arrests and brought parts of the city to a standstill on Monday, despite the level 3 lockdown regulations preventing gatherings.
He said the group wanted to highlight the plight of backyard dwellers. A similar protest last year was marked by violence.
Adams does not mince his words when he speaks about race or why he has formed a political party, the Cape Coloured Congress.
“We are fighting injustice,” he told the Sunday Times. “The marginalisation of the coloured youth in an economy that does not want them is one of the injustices. We are fighting the abuse of the housing process. We have people who have been sitting on the housing list for 35 years and you get someone from the Eastern Cape who is not even 25 years old jumping the queue.”
He hailed the protest last year as a success. “Last year’s one was much more successful and much more violent,” he said. “But if you are looking for action, last year’s one scared me. This year I went out of my way to ensure that no violence happens. One day someone will make a call for a violent overthrow but that won’t be me.”
JP Smith, Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for safety, said Monday’s protest “made very little impact, and was called off barely a few hours in”.
But he said such events “harm vulnerable and poor communities the most and deny them access to services and especially emergency services”.
Adams traced the inequality he is fighting to the pre-1994 era. “Apartheid created all these scars,” he said. “Whites still have that sense of entitlement and superiority. “Many coloureds still see themselves as superior to blacks. Many blacks think ‘it’s my time now’.”
He also laid into the “rubbish” Eastern Cape government.
“Poor black Africans are here because there is nothing left for them in that province. Many of them come here out of desperation, and I do sympathise with them. However, you cannot possibly expect to come from 3,000km away and jump every queue.
“My community, the coloured people in particular, have become exponentially poorer over the past 24 years because of BEE and affirmative action. Let the people go home and fight their government to stop plundering and start growing.
“My home is the Western Cape. It is the only home I know. Eastern Cape and Limpopo used to be bantustans. So you have a traditional home, an ancestral home. But they are here, many of them grabbing land. Is it fair that one man has a piece of land in two provinces while a local has nothing?
“This is not racist, it’s not even a classbased issue — it’s a fairness issue.
“Homelands were given to black people when they were dispossessed. What did we get in exchange for Constantia and Rondebosch? Mitchells Plain, Bishop Lavis and Lavender Hill.”
Adams said coloured heroes were not adequately honoured in the Western Cape. “There is a road named after Mandela, there is one named after Sisulu, Sobukwe and Tambo. But what about our Ashley Kriel?”
He said not all coloured people shared his views. “You need a Moses to unite coloured people and I think even Moses would also have his work cut out for him.
“Not every coloured agrees because some coloured people say I am racist. But I am past that stage of trying to capture every coloured’s heart. Mandela couldn’t do it, who am I?”