Cape Town - Anti-corruption campaigner Terry Crawford-Browne on Friday likened the upcoming Unite Against Corruption march to the famous 1989 Cape Town March for Peace, which attracted 35 000 Capetonians to the city centre.
But while the 1989 march called for an end to apartheid, Crawford-Browne said the march set to take place on September 30 was calling for an end to the power of the “one percent” who, “by greed and corruption, suppresses the 99 percent of us”.
He was speaking at the Claremont Main Road Mosque after being invited by Imam Rashied Omar to address the Friday congregation.
Omar said the mosque had endorsed the Unite Against Corruption Campaign.
In his 20-minute talk, Crawford-Browne repeatedly used the word gatvol (fed up).
“Capetonians in September 1989 said ‘enough’, we are gatvol with apartheid. That message went round the country and the world,” he said.
“Twenty-six years later, we are gatvol with politicians and officials and entrepreneurs who think they have a licence to line their pockets at public expense.”
The march was their “opportunity to express and apply the power that lies with the people”.
He said everything from load shedding and quality of policing, to the collapse of the rand on international markets, had been worsened by “corruption and incompetence”. The anti-corruption campaigner had both the ANC and the DA in his sights.
He slammed both parties for not providing adequate housing to people living in informal settlements in the city.
Crawford-Browne said the march would bring together a coalition of 350 civil society organisations, religious bodies and what he called “prominent individuals”.
Chief among these is former Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
Vavi this week denied the march was aimed at attacking or “embarrassing” the trade union federation.
In response to media reports that Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini had banned the union’s affiliates from attending, Vavi said the march was a “broad-based coalition aimed” at putting the spotlight on “business leaders who fix tenders, the public officials who they bribe”. Two marches will take place on Wednesday, September 30, one to the Union Buildings in Pretoria and the other from District Six to Parliament in Cape Town.
Weekend Argus