Ex-QDMS
RONDEBOSCH COMMON PICTURE ANDREW INGRAM..01 02 1998
A WEEK is a long time in politics, former British prime minister, Harold Wilson famously said in 1964. Well, a month is even longer, and the month of January has been a very long, and a very bad month for the DA/ID alliance in the Western Cape.
The alliance has, with all due respect, behaved like a bunch of bungling amateurs with regard to two of the most emotive of all possible local landmarks – Chapman’s Peak Drive and the Rondebosch Common – and on that most fundamental of democratic rights, the right to protest. It’s right there in the Bill of Rights, section 17: “Everyone has the right, peacefully and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present petitions.”
And section 21 states “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement” while section 12 of our Bill of Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom and security of the person, which includes the right... (a) not to be deprived of freedom arbitrarily or without just cause; (b) not to be detained without trial; (and) (c) to be free from all forms of violence from either public or private sources”.
Last Friday, about 100 (according to reports) protesters tried to march to Rondebosch Common. Despite being fully within their constitutional rights, the City of Cape Town had declared their march “illegal”, apparently because representatives of the group arrived late for a meeting with some or other bureaucrat and/or committee which then declined permission for the march, despite what the Bill of Rights says.
I saw the aftermath: Klipfontein Road a lurid blue, with a second patch of blue in Campground Road; a massive police presence surrounding a very small group of protesters; Casspir tracks on Rondebosch Common; and, above all, a massive loss of political face for Patricia de Lille and the DA.
Why didn’t De Lille just shut up instead of – well in advance of the planned protest action – calling Mario Wanza and his comrades “agents of destruction”? Why did she, again in advance of the action, deny them their constitutional rights by saying “I tell the people of Cape Town this; they will not succeed because we will not let them”?
This was not a “land invasion”. This was a symbolic march to the Common to hold what amounted to a seminar on public land. If the Council and the police had simply ignored the event, it would have been the political equivalent of a tree falling in an uninhabited forest: a few paragraphs and perhaps a picture in the weekend newspapers, by Monday it would have been old news and not worth reporting.
Instead it made headlines and went out on national television: heavily armoured police, water cannons with dye, women protesters being arrested; all against the backdrop of Devil’s Peak – that’s what’s known in the television business as “sexy pictures”.
What a monumental political blunder.
And then there’s the handling by Western Cape Transport MEC, Robin Carlisle, of the Chapman’s Peak saga. I like Robin Carlisle. I think he is a very effective politician. But Helen Zille should know by now that, a bit like the high pressure water hoses on those police Casspirs on Rondebosch Common, he is a bit of a loose cannon, the proverbial bull in the China shop.
For heaven’s sake – if there is one lesson to learn about Cape Town, it’s that you mess with The Mountain at your peril. And Chapman’s Peak is very much part of The Mountain.
Has the DA, and Carlisle, forgotten the massively tortuous process that had to be gone through to proclaim the Table Mountain National Park? It was a long and tough negotiation that involved among others the then Municipalities of Cape Town, Fish Hoek, Simon’s Town, Hout Bay, the Navy, CapeNature, the Mountain Club of SA and scores of private landowners and organisations. It was a compromise deal which had at its core a citizen advisory board specifically to allay fears that SANParks, a national entity, would act unilaterally against the interests of the people of Cape Town.
And now TMNP, in apparent cahoots with the Western Cape government and Entilini, have done just that, unilaterally and without a transparent process of consultation, alienated a piece of National Parks land to build a permanent office block structure.
The DA can thank its lucky trinkets that 2012 is not an election year. It will take a long time for their voting public to forget two blunders quite so egregious as these.
I really thought they were better politicians than this.
tony.weaver@inl.co.za
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Anonymous, wrote
For Anonymous asking whether the DA has a land reform policy, they certainly do - look it up on Politicsweb, or just google it - they have excellent ideas, properly researched and intelligently expressed, unlike what the ANC comes up with.
Anonymous, wrote
Does anyone out there know if and what the DA land policy is? Does it have a policy? Or is it summed up by a SABC-type cliche used by de Lille 'correct channels'?
Anonymous, wrote
The proposition that the landowners have already been compensated is reinforced by the disproportionate increase in land prices. Added to the general practice of artificial scarcity which inflates prices, many may have been overcompensated in 1994 terms. The 1994 date is significant and ought to be read with 1913 and the Cap Gains effective date. The method (even applying a fickle willing seller buyer method) would, as Cap Gains, adjust the value with the enrichment (proven or deemed) since 1994. Quite fair and reasonable and, in terms of pre-1994 law, probably enduring. The leasehold suggestion, especially given examples like ANC Big Bay and DA Bredell Hermanus 'fraud', is a serious contender.
Anonymous, wrote
@anon the 'shooter' - You are a bit violent. Rather give the landowners an opportunity to hand over their land voluntarily. Shooting them is like attcking the people and not the problem.
Anonymous, wrote
Echo. When, Ms de Lille and Lidiwe, do you intend releasing your party's non-existent land policy? Land redistribution was a constitutional imperative but the method has been kicked down the road. The argument that earnings over this delayed period has in fact been adequate compensation, is not unreasonable at all.
Anonymous, wrote
Should have used real bullets. What is this nonsense of occupying places. Shoot the bloody agents.
Anonymous, wrote
Weaver pushes Jan Steyn's apartheid job which was to create a stable middle class. The Valkenberg side of the DA de Lille and Mazibuko (?) is that the land issue has been buried for 20 years and the two leaders are protecting white landowners and a white-supremacist status quo. The landowners have had almost 20 years wealth-generation from their land - the simple calc is that if they earned more than 5% per annum, they have been fully compensated during this period of delay. So, expropriate, it is quite just and legal, without compensation, now. BUT it would be, as Hong Kong, better to reallocate (as Hong Kong, etc) to white as well as black kids especially, on leasehold. ALL kids would afford access to land and if nobody owns it, nobody will fight over it. Enough.
Athol de Klerk, wrote
Wow, his holiest has a little dirty secret. He served the apartheid regime and denied black people their human rights. I wonder how many of these people have not been outed. If only I could get myself a list of all whites who served the apartheid military and publish the list on the internet. In addition, i would really like to publish the broederbond list too. I guess the who's who in the media industry will also be exposed. Tony, please atone for supporting and practicing injustice against the black population of South Africa. Lastly, you do not have a right, I mean any right to write negative articles because of your ugly past - you look at issues with your apartheid lens. Tell me what was your rank in the military and what awful and egregious things did you do to earn it. Please come clean.
Anonymous, wrote
Please check this article...http:davidrobertlewis.wordpress.com20091003tony-weaver-you-are-a-disgrace-to-the-human-race Tony Weaver's dirty little secret! Tony Weaver who epitomises the macho gun-slinging war correspondent, now wants to ingratiate himself with the End Conion Campaign and its 25th Anniversary celebration. In a recent column in the neo-con daily Cape Times, Weaver relates his military career in the apartheid war machine. Listing several occasions in which he served in the same military responsible for dirty tricks against anti-apartheid activists and the death of Neil Aggett and David Webster, he then appears to regret “not having the opportunity” to join the ECC as an afterthought. Well, Mr Weaver, it is surely too late to join the ECC now, not after 911. Maybe in a parallel dimension somewhere, another life, one in which you didn’t support the apartheid military-industrial complex? There is no going back now, no second chance to undo the damage — to make the right decision, to oppose apartheid, to cross the rubicon and to take a path which you never had the guts take. No, Tony, you are a disgrace to the memory of all those who died because of apartheid, all those who suffered in detention or at the hands of apartheid torturers. The fact that you are able to get away with writing your claptrap on a regular basis for the Cape Times is a testimony to the outright prejudice and wilful ignorance of the publishers — INM continue to maintain that having a military record is preferably to a dishonerable discharge.* Your sterling record of service in the apartheid military which fought to uphold race segregation and class privilege has been noted. I thank you for making my life easier by allowing me to quote your pitiful misgivings at having participated in the slaughter of fellow South Africans in my case against the Independent Group. The company employs more than a few white soldiers and has continued to deny basic human rights to those who opposed the apartheid system.
Anonymous, wrote
The blacks in the DA will corrupt the organization, it will become like the ANC. I hope we whites stand together against these natives. In my suburb of Rondebosch they are too many, I cannot walk in the streets anymore.
Anonymous, wrote
"I really thought they were better politicians than this." - Hi Tony Weaver, is it because the DA leadership is white, with token blacks? Bigotry is revealing.
Anonymous, wrote
The chappies protest is against the building of an office building within the park - not against the toll road [as some seem to think] . Wouldnt suprise me if in while we will see it morph into a hotel. Mmmm maybe time to check a certain politician's finances. Generally this sort of roughshod action this accompanied by corruption of some sort.
Anonymous, wrote
The bland acceptance of the trumped up 'late for meeting' and then the 'meetingless' sanction of the event coupled with, and there is no other word, fascist behaviour of Zille and de Lille, indicates the type of rubbish which has floated up in our political vacuum caused both by emigration and a van Zyl Slabbert realisation of 'what am I doing here amongst these people?' Sadly, the list system has been abused for cronyism for people with the aptitude of secondhand salespeople rather than the intellectually unchallenged. Flotsam rules!
Anonymous, wrote
You make it sound like someone else may be to blame. The DA has brought it on to itself. And by what it does and not what its leaders say.
Anonymous, wrote
Ambrosini lives in Hout Bay too. Why has he not been on the radio? Carlisle was on a good few times. Reminds me of the old SABC - see no evil wadda wadda wadda
Anonymous, wrote
The DA has got what it deserves. Chappies is an issue and the radio and even the Argus did not have another party's (Ambrosini) to comment. Why? The only logical assumption is that it would have embarrassed the DA. It makes no diffs to vote for ANY opposition in our system (I vote ACDP and Ambrosini is IFP - no DA spokesperson I have heard could match Ambrosini on the media issue but local radio have kept him out on that issue and Chappies).
Anonymous, wrote
Horrible for the DA is good for SA. At the heart of the DA are the same old National and United Parties. The land is still effectively owned by whites, the overwhelming majority of whom are the DA. de Lille and the DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe whatever, should tell us how they intend dealing with the baas' land, asseblief.
Anonymous, wrote
No, it is a 'horrible month' because opponents of this group of white supremacists have finally received some media space. It has been a 'horrible' few years for those on the receiving end of the DA with no voice to air the truth. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that this type of governance has been destroyed in SA before and will be again - the significant difference is that there will be no Mandela. maybe the DA should realise that its fear and hate campaign has almost single-handedly destroyed the common hope which bound all South Africans in those miraculous queues in 1994. Sad.
COyZAn, wrote
Did the DA not call for people in Gauteng NOT to pay the new e-toll road tax? And now they allow for a toll road. On Chappies nogal. Nice going. You know politicians are lying when their lips are moving.
Anonymous, wrote
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