Switch that off, says angry Sisulu

A Cape Town housing activist said he was shocked by the way Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu shouted at him when he said residents of eMpolweni were still waiting for building materials he claimed she had promised.

“She took off her mask and in a violent way was shouting at me,” Nkosikhona Swartbooi said.

“She slapped my hand and said I mustn’t record.”

In a tweet, Swartbooi claims that moments later, when Sisulu got into her vehicle to leave, she instructed one of her bodyguards to confiscate his phone and force him to get into a vehicle.

He said by then the community had started shouting and the ministerial convoy left.

A video he took of Sisulu’s visit to the fire-ravaged Taiwan informal settlement was posted on Twitter. Sisulu was visiting what was left of the settlement in Khayelitsha after a fire raged through it in the early hours of 1 January, leaving at least 500 people affected.

This was after a devastating fire in Masiphumelele devastated about 1 000 structures on 17 December.

Sisulu was accompanied by Western Cape human settlements MEC Tertius Simmers and City of Cape Town MMC for human settlements Malusi Booi as part of plans to fast-track relief, according to a statement by the Western Cape government.

In the video, Sisulu moves through the site, treading carefully, and Swartbooi comments: “Let’s hope, minister, you won’t do that same thing you did [at] eMpolweni. You promised for years to build structures. You never built them.”

Sisulu then replies, taking off her mask with a pink gloved hand, “No! No! No!”

Swartbooi continues: “They are still waiting for you, even this very day...” to which Sisulu replies “you are lying.”

She then calls on him to “switch that off ”. When Swartbooi refuses and asks why, she says, “Because you are talking rubbish. I said to you I will buy that material.”

“Did you buy it?” he asks and she replies, “Did you bring it to me?”, as she becomes increasingly agitated at being fi lmed.

Swartbooi is also part of a group called Cape Town Together as well as a network of human rights monitors. They helped link the people who were evicted from eMpolweni during the lockdown to connect with lawyers.

He said the eMpolweni residents lost their materials during the evictions and the materials that were returned were unusable. In a meeting, Sisulu told them she would help them get it back, but he said nothing was done.

A court judgment had ordered that they get their materials back and R2 000 compensation. Swartbooi said he has video footage of a meeting where she committed to getting materials.