Samekoms, comprising activists from the Cape Flats, believes there is no purpose in continuing with protests because they have failed to bring about the change the majority of the people in the country are desperately seeking.
It is also of the opinion the Covid-19 pandemic is a “hoax” to further impoverish the disadvantaged – therefore none of its members wears a mask or uses sanitiser – and they no longer refer to people on the Cape Flats as “coloured”, believing all the “indigenous people" from the Cape need to unite and start a dialogue between the poor and rich, in which the government will not be involved; “to take matters into their own hands to claim reparations from those controlling, and who have benefited from, the colonial economic system, white people specifically”.
This was stated on Tuesday by Gatto Wanza of Samekoms, who was asked for comment on Monday’s protests across Cape Town, which led to the arrest of 25 people for a range of crimes, including public violence and contravention of parts of the Disaster Management Act.
Among those protesting was the Gatvol Capetonian pressure group. It consists of members of the Cape Coloured Congress, which registered as a political party last December and announced on its Facebook site today it had reached 50 000 members.
Most of the protests were related to land invasions, evictions and housing, while the founder of the Gatvol Capetonian movement, Fadiel Adams, said they were protesting over the “lack of opportunities for coloured people, victimisation of teachers, homelessness, coloured marginalisation, economic poverty and the lack of ANC political will to combat gangsterism and drugs”.
Adams, who staged a seven-day hunger strike outside Parliament in March that ended with him handing over a memorandum of demands to President Cyril Ramaphosa's secretary, said in a video on social media on Monday morning that “they had made their point” in their protests on Monday after calling it to an early end.
Concerned about the recent spate of land invasions, evictions and violence in Cape Town, Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has met her counterparts from the Police, Agriculture and Public Works departments, saying they have agreed to devise a plan to deal with some of the challenges, including restoring law and order and providing housing. She will be meeting mayor Dan Plato today to discuss the challenges the City faces.
So according to this GATVOL CAPETONIANS group the so called black South Africans must leave Cape Town. They're also protesting against ANC in a DA led province and Municipality.
— king of Confesssions Keith (@KaConfessor) July 27, 2020
I'm utterly confused with what's happening in Cape Town pic.twitter.com/ZdP6gaOzE6
Wanza said: "We don’t use the word coloured any more; it came from the British Settlers. The time for protests is over and the indigenous people of the Cape need to come together to talk about the suffering our people are enduring and to come up with the solutions that will work for us.
“Indigenous refers to the Khoisan, who are the original people from the tip of Africa, as well as your Nguni people, Xhosas, Zulus and so forth. There are only two groups of people: there are people who are historically from Africa and then there are people who came to Africa, who settled here.
“It doesn’t make sense that our people should be going hungry while Africa is a very rich continent. We say the way forward must come from the indigenous people, the government doesn’t have the answers; the answers vest with us as people coming together.
“The second part of the issue is that we need to engage with the people who are sitting with our wealth and our resources. The economic system we operate on is a colonial system which is based on exploitation.
“So Samekoms has written to the Archbishop of the Anglican Church because we want to meet with them. We have written to the Jewish Board of Deputies because we want to meet with them. We will go on setting up meetings with the people who claim ownership of our resources; the corporations, the Cape Chamber of Commerce, we will engage with them.
“We need to engage with white people specifically to say that we can’t continue living this way. They continue as normal, enjoying the luxuries of Africa, but the indigenous people are suffering. So for us, the transition is for a need for dialogue between people, the rich and poor.
“We are of the belief that apartheid hasn’t died; we are being lied to. Apartheid is based on inequality and we are living in the worst of times now when it comes to inequality.
“For us, it’s a colonial economic system. The government has got no teeth, it is managed by the corporations. So it’s not our government, it doesn’t represent us or our interests.
“The government is caught in the middle, so that’s why it’s for us about the indigenous people sitting down with the rich people; I’ve identified the churches as being part of that because the Anglican Church has taken a massive amount of land from us, they indoctrinated us, they have got a lot to answer for.
“Similarly the Jewish Board of Deputies, those are the people we want to engage with about reparations. Our deal is each indigenous person over 18 must be paid out R1 million in reparations and an apology must come from specifically the Anglican Church, the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Cape Chamber of Commerce for business entities.”
Wanza believes Covid-19 is just another strategy to entrench the power of a select few, saying: “We are being oppressed and exploited and Covid is a hoax. People are realising that it is all part of a strategy to impoverish our people further.
“You have an elitist group of people who are siphoning off all our money in the guise that there is a virus. Because if there is a virus, then why don’t we boost the immune system of our people because that will counter any virus.
"The government is not providing vitamins through fruit and vegetables. Why is there no food coming into our communities, why are people going hungry?
“We don’t wear masks, we don’t believe in sanitisers and those things, but for us, it’s ultimately that this colonial system must come to an end. It didn’t in 1994, so that lie must be fixed.”
Wanza said the R70.72 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help the country mitigate the adverse social and economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic “is all part of the whole scam”.
“The government, without the consent of the people, signs off on this loan, the terms of which aren’t known to us and all that means is that we are controlled by the IMF, the World Bank and corporations. That money will never filter down to the people.
“That is why we are talking about a new economic order where each indigenous person over 18 gets R1 million.
“We need to be going to Constantia, to Camps Bay, because we come from the mountainside but are languishing on the Cape Flats. The only forward is when the indigenous people and the white people come forward through dialogue and have a conversation about change.”
Asked what chances such a dialogue would have of succeeding, Wanza said: “There is a realisation more and more that the only way forward is through dialogue, and the dialogue must be pushed from the Cape Flats.”
IOL