Cape poo protesters kick up a stink over demands

FOR the umpteenth time Cape Town’s poo protesters have threatened chaos if the DA-led provincial government fails to heed their demands for sanitation, land and housing.

Former ANC Cape Town councillor and now Ses’khona People’s Rights Movement secretary Loyiso Nkohla said the protesters would return to Cape Town’s city centre if no progress was made on their demands.

Nkohla, along with another fired councillor, Andile Lili, became notorious last year for leading the poo protests, dumping faeces inside the Western Cape government buildings and the Cape Town International Airport.

He was speaking after about 1 000 people marched to the Western Cape provincial legislature, where he delivered a memorandum to DA leader and premier Helen Zille.

Nkohla said: “It was not a Ses’khona [organised] march, we were just giving support. If the demands are not met we shall come back to town, and we will help our-

We will help ourselves, and also invade open land in the townships

selves, and also invade open land in the townships.”

Asked whether this was a threat to violence, he responded: “If they can’t govern us, we shall govern ourselves.”

In October last year marchers, unhappy that their memorandum had not been collected by Zille, set off on a looting spree in the city centre, with several hawkers targeted.

After the march, at which ANC provincial chairman Marius Fransman also spoke, Zille said she was grateful to the organisers.

She said the images, mostly of ANC-supporting marchers in the Cape Town CBD, would serve as motivation for the DA’s voters who would come out on May 7.

Zille was refused the opportunity to address the marchers after coming out to accept their memorandum on the steps of the legislature. Instead she was sworn at by Nkohla, who had a microphone in his hand.

Later she said she would have told the marchers about the capital projects that her administration had undertaken, and that most of their complaints were more related to local government issues.

“I had all the answers for them but their purpose was not to get answers but to grandstand,” Zille said.