Furious Joe Slovo residents near Milnerton set alight two community halls and damaged a MyCiTi bus and infrastructure in protests this week.
In Vrygrond, residents barricaded some of their area’s streets with burning tyres in anti-taxi violence and service delivery protests that continued unabated for the past two days. Both Joe Slovo halls were severely damaged, the city said. The damage, including to the hall’s storeroom, as well as to all the recreation equipment, came hours after the city’s Recreation and Parks Department had finished extensive repairs.
The cost of the torched bus amounted to over R4million, said mayoral committee member for transport and urban development Brett Herron. He said the total cost of the damage was still being assessed by insurers.
Protesters were unhappy about issues including the cleaning of streets, the removal of mobile classrooms used by Khozi Primary School and the city’s dismantling of shacks. They vowed to continue protesting until their demands were met. Vrygrond residents protested over the authorities’ impounding of taxis and the city’s apparent failure to meet and discuss residents’ concerns about service delivery and land for housing.
Vrygrond Development Forum secretary Nonkosi Fodo said mayor Patricia de Lille and Premier Helen Zille ignored their complaints. “If we don’t get a response from the premier and the mayor, we will continue with our protests.”
Vrygrond Taxi Association chairperson Makonjandile Tumana said they were not part of the protests. “We are not yet supporting them, but we will.”
MEC for Transport and Public Works Donald Grant’s spokesperson, Siphesihle Dube, said the Provincial Transport Registrar had instituted disciplinary action against the Vrygrond Taxi Association (VTA) for contravening the code of conduct for taxi associations by allegedly taking on unregistered and unlicensed members, flooding routes with illegal operators and preventing legal operators from Retreat Taxi Association (RTA) from entering certain areas.
The RTA had been warned in the past not to take the law into their own hands, said Dube.
“VTA has used every opportunity to delay, frustrate and hinder the registrar’s process with their latest attempt, in last week, being a request for a high court order to stop the process. This attempt was unsuccessful, with the high court dismissing VTA’s case and the department securing a cost order against the association.”