Cape Town – More than 1 000 people were going to embark on another total shutdown protest in Cape Town on Thursday – this time predominantly in the southern suburbs.
However, Fadiel Adams, the leader and national spokesperson of civic organisation Gatvol Capetonian, told the Cape Times on Tuesday this has been put on the backburner due to them having to meet National Deputy Minister of Human Settlements Litha Jolobe and delegations from the national departments of Co-operative Governance and Public Works at The Castle on Thursday.
After the August 8 total shutdown protests across the metro, Jolobe had agreed to have a backyarder summit as soon as possible to move this critical issue on the Cape Flats onto the national agenda.
Adams had served notice to the City of Cape Town after the protest "that within 21 days we will be back and we will be better resourced and mobilised and our reach will be further, if they don't meet the demands in our memorandum".
"The City didn't even bother to respond to the memorandum in an e-mail," said Adams, who added that Mayor Dan Plato, "probably to gauge what our next move was", had called him on Sunday with "the promise of a call the next day, which never happened".
"What would've happened by any reasonable man's imagination is that we gave the City a memorandum they should have at least responded to by email. They said nothing.
"The City is hoping the poor people, the backyarders, the homeless are going to disappear like a cold. But hungry people don't.
"We had planned to bus our members into the suburbs we want our people to return to – the Constantias, Woodstocks, Rondebosches, Claremonts and Goodwoods they were thrown out of in the 1960s.
"It could've worked out to somewhere between 1 000 to 2000 people, depending on our budget, which is basically non-existent.
"The shutdown was planned for the 29th of August but we are meeting the minister at The Castle on that day. So there is no point in shutting down.
"It's now on the backburner depending on the outcome of the national backyarders summit. If we get what we want from the summit, we've got no reason to protest.
"Who wants to go and protest and risk being victimised and tear-gassed and having rubber bullets fired at you. No one wants to do it, but it becomes necessary though.
"We are going to meet the minister in good faith and to ask the minister to escalate this issue and take it out of the hands of an incompetent local government and if that doesn't work, then we will continue with our action.
"The signs are good that it's going to be a concerted and co-operative attempt by various roleplayers. The national summit for backyarders is also on. The invitations have been sent out.
"The summit is specifically for backyarders but we have pushed to include the homeless and people who live in overcrowded council rental units and that type of thing. We have had to be more inclusive with the City fining homeless people."
The total shutdown movement highlighted the plight of those living in backyards, pleading for access to land and housing, by holding protests on major roads and at intersections across the Cape Town metro.
Despite a threat by Mayco member for safety and security JP Smith on August 9 to "lay criminal charges in relation to incitement to violence and other offences against the national spokesperson of the organisation responsible for the illegal protests" and "speedily arrest this person", Adams said this is yet to happen.
He has instead laid criminal charges against Smith for blaming him for the violence, as they had insisted that the protest proceed peacefully, Adams said.
Adams appeared in the Bishop Lavis Magistrate's Court two weeks ago on charges of intimidation, common assault and crimen injuria after he threatened to “moer” Bonteheuwel ward councillor and Angus Mckenzie. In a video made in his car, Adams also called Mckenzie a "DA lapdog".
This was after Mckenzie criticised him for organising the total shutdown protest, which Smith said resulted in, among others, damage to public infrastructure in excess of R1.5 million.
"We don't believe what JP Smith says. It's like he said the damage that I apparently incited was R1.5 million. Within hours he could pull out that figure, while there were fires burning in places that we certainly didn't start.
"I would like to know who the assessors were he sent into areas while people were apparently still stoning cars. JP Smith is either a compulsive liar or a professional one. I am not sure which one," said Adams.
Aside from questioning the competency of local government officials, Adams believes it will be much better to do away with provincial governments.
"It's just a mechanism to confuse us. Because when you raise an issue, then they say it's not my competency, it's provincial; and then when you go to provincial, it's national. When they send you to national, they send you back to local.
"I think we should do away with this rubbish of provincial governments because they are nothing but a strain on the budget. All they do is administer, but administer what, money?
"This is where the money disappears somewhere in this web. We have got MECs for X, Y and Z that are responsible for virtually nothing.
"They have got no executive powers because everything needs to come from national. So why are they there?"