Cape Town - The ANC Youth League in the Western Cape says it expects more than 14 000 people at its second “economic freedom’’ march into the city centre on Monday.
City of Cape Town spokeswoman Kylie Hatton said the league had applied for permission for 10 000 marchers who were expected to assemble at Keizersgracht from 10am. The march was expected to start at 11am from Keizersgracht, then move along Darling Street into Adderley Street, and on to the provincial legislature buildings in Wale Street, and is expected to be over by 1.30pm.
Police said they will not tolerate lawlessness from the marchers.
The ANCYL’s march is aimed at making the province “ungovernable” until Premier Helen Zille responds to its service delivery demands.
But Zille has said she will accept the memorandum from the league only if they “retract their unlawful threats and apologise to the people of the Western Cape”.
Monday’s march comes after the ANCYL delivered a memorandum to the provincial legislature last month where it demanded that Zille deliver services like toilets and houses to informal settlements.
The league also demanded that the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system be stopped because it was killing the “100 percent black-owned taxi industry”.
Other organisations that will join Monday’s march include Cosatu, the SA Students Congress, the SA National Civic Organisation, the Congress of SA Students, the Islamic Unity Convention, and the taxi organisations Congress for Democratic Taxi Associations and Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association.
Hatton said there would be “rolling road closures where roads will be closed, then reopened as the group moves through an area. We have found that this has a lesser effect on traffic”.
Police spokesman Colonel Andre Traut said they were ready for Monday’s march and would not tolerate lawlessness from the marchers. “We will in particular concentrate on intimidation of the public, as this is regarded as a serious offence.”
Metrorail regional manager Mthuthuzeli Swartz said they would be running a normal train service and would deal with disruptions as they happened.
Zille said she and mayor Patricia de Lille tried to be available for meetings with communities that have grievances so they could discuss what was possible within the constraints of existing waiting lists and resources.
She said the youth league was not interested in discussing service delivery problems “as they demonstrated in Khayelitsha recently when young men wearing ANC berets violently broke up a service-delivery report-back meeting convened by mayor De Lille”.
The ANCYL chairman for the Dullah Omar region, Khaya Yozi, said on Sunday they had recruited residents from all over the Western Cape and that the march was a chance for residents to say “we have had enough” of a lack of service delivery in the province.
But Zille accused Yozi of not having genuine grievances about his living conditions because he lived in an RDP house given to him by the city.
Yozi said on Sunday he did not own an RDP house.
“Every time the madam opens her mouth, she is embarrassing herself. I don’t have an RDP house. The RDP house in Nyanga belongs to my mother and it was given to her in 1999 by the ANC government, not the city.”
Cape Argus
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