Cape Town - A delegation from the ANC Youth League national task team is to go on a walkabout in Kosovo and other informal settlements on Wednesday to determine the extent of the sanitation “crisis” in Cape Town, says ANC proportional councillor and league member Loyiso Nkohla.
Nkohla said the delegation was here to “see the extent of the toilet problem themselves” before taking a stand on the matter. This comes after the ANC and the league’s Dullah Omar (metro) region distanced themselves from the portaloo protests last Wednesday.
ANC leader in the provincial legislature, Lynne Brown, slated the dumping of human waste as an “unneccessary action”.
She said she understood it was not an official ANC Youth League action, as the league in the Western Cape was currently “disbanded”. But despite criticising the protest action’s methods, Brown said she agreed the “portaloos” were “just too undignified” – even as temporary measures.
Nkohla and former ANC councillor and suspended league member Andile Lili are the ringleaders in the “faeces war” on Premier Helen Zille.
The two, armed with portaloo tanks full of human waste, led the first group of protesters to the provincial legislature last week to spill the sewage outside Zille’s office. A day later, the pair were among the group that flung faeces at Zille’s convoy as it left an official event in Khayelitsha.
On Monday, Lili and 183 suspects were removed from a train and arrested in Woodstock. They were on their way to dump human waste outside the legislature. Seven of the suspects are still in custody, while 77 were released on warnings the same day. Police spokesman Captain FC van Wyk said the group would appear in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday.
Nkohla said Lili was among those still in custody.
Meanwhile, DA provincial leader Ivan Meyer has called on Deputy Minister of International Relations and Co-operation Marius Fransman to formally apologise to the UN after Nkohla and others dumped faeces in the foyer of the provincial government building on Greenmarket Square, which is also occupied by UN staff.
“This despicable act, which is part of the ANCYL and Fransman’s plan to make the Western Cape ungovernable, is now also an embarrassment for the national government, through which the Department International Relations and Co-operation has strong ties with the UN,” Meyer said.
Fransman said it was the DA that needed to apologise for not providing proper toilets to the poor in the Western Cape. – Additional reporting by Murray Williams
Cape Argus