Category: elections

Friday’s Protest March: City taking things seriously, but too quietly?

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Tomorrow’s protest march (or “prohibited event” as the city are quietly calling it) in Cape Town looks set to go ahead and will almost certainly be bigger than last month’s paltry 3,500 turnout. But whether the organisers will manage to get their somewhat optimistic estimate of 200,000 remains to be seen. I fully expect the Metro Police to tell us that there were 10,000 in town while Loyiso Nkohla and his Ogobityholo BaseKapa chums claim 3 million or something.

Either way, it’s reasonable to expect widespread disruption and – sadly – probably high levels of violence as well. And while the city has applied for an interdict to prevent the marchers from marching. This strikes me (no pun intended) as being a bit of a waste of time, since permission to march has already been denied and the organisers don’t seem to give a toss. I find it unlikely that they’ll suddenly have a change of heart when there’s an interdict against them.

Comrades! Let us take back this city! Let us show the White Madam that she cannot… wait… what? She’s got an interdict? OK. Never mind. Back to work everybody!

The Province claims to have done all they can to meet the demands of the organisers, and says that there is therefore no need for this action on Friday:

The Province has done everything that could be expected to engage with the leaders of Ogobityholo BaseKapa from the start of their campaign and we are willing to continue engaging with them on their issues of concern when presented in good faith. It should therefore be apparent that there is no reason for them to march on Friday, as our supposed “lack of engagement” was the claimed reason for their march.

But while the City is publicly being very quiet about the march and their preparations for it, there’s no doubt that a lot of planning is going on behind the scenes. Today’s Cape Times reports that there’s an internal memo doing the rounds:

It states that intelligence has been gathered by various agencies which suggests that march organisers have been mobilising people from Khayelitsha, Dunoon, Wallacedene and Brown’s farm in Philippi. Residents from informal settlements in Stellenbosch and Paarl are also believed to be joining the march.

The memorandum states that “looting has been encouraged at the planning meetings that have been taking place in the informal settlements. Organisers have suggested that food and Christmas presents will be easily available in the CBD for the marchers.”

More chillingly is the advice for emergency services and hospitals to prepare for large numbers of casualties:

Staff were also notified that “mass casualty resources” have to be checked and ready for deployment.

Hmm.

While this softly, softly approach is presumably about not giving the marchers much publicity, it’s certainly not doing the concerned citizens of the City any good. Helen Zille’s twitter timeline is filled with questions about whether people should come in to work tomorrow and whether any preparations have been made:

is there a strong possibility of a strike 2row?Is it advisable not 2 go to work 2row- if one works in town?

I own a showroom in central CT and am concerned about the rumored protests Fri. Will there be a police / army presence? Tx Barry

And who can blame them when that (publicly available) Provincial report contains this sort of information?

The Premier has written to the Mayor relaying information received from the State Security Agency that the protest march on Friday is deliberately intended to be violent. The organisers are planning various disruptions that include enforcing a work stay-away, stopping taxis and buses from operating and staging a three day sit-in outside the Provincial Legislature. The danger of random attacks on taxis, buses and commuters is therefore very real.

The information is that the organisers want this protest march to be accompanied by looting and attacks on businesses and commuters, although they plan to deny that this is their intention so that they can eschew responsibility for any violence and disruption that occurs.

If you’re going to make those sort of statements public, you also need to publicly reassure people that you’re doing something to prevent it happening and to keep them safe. That hasn’t been evident from the Province or the City as yet, so it’s natural that people are going to fear the worst about tomorrow in Cape Town.

Save the Rhino(ceros Party of Canada)

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Sadly, it’s all too late. The Rhinoceros Party of Canada became extinct in 1993. Not due to excessive poaching to supply any lucrative South East Asian market, but probably simply down to a lack of votes.

South Africa has 19 new political parties, all vying for your vote ahead of next years elections and with great names like the Bolsheviks Party of SA and the Nehemiah Liberation Christian Party. I’M SURE THEY’LL DO JUST BRILLIANTLY NEXT APRIL.

But amazingly, we don’t have a Rhinoceros Party. And even if we did, it wouldn’t really be as good as the Canadian Rhinoceros Party (RIP). Because they wouldn’t have brilliant policies like a promise to repeal the law of gravity, putting the national debt on Visa and declaring war on Belgium, along with the rather more typical political promise of “promising to keep none of our promises.”
Yet some of these are really good ideas.

Yes, this was a comedic parody party, made up of artists and poets, and yet they polled almost 2.5% of the vote in a couple of elections in the 1980s. That’s almost 30 times as much as our local comedy party, The Cape Party got in their last outing.

How emboerresing.

Go and visit that wikipedia page, because they had many other wonderful ideas that could surely be adapted to our local political and geographical landscape to make South Africa a better place for us all to be.

Until election time, celery and sidewalks. Thank you. Good night.

Who Threw Poo?

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Was it you?

Probably not, according to the Provincial Government, unless your name appears on the:

dossier of information relating to the individuals responsible for these attacks

And if you’re not from these parts, then “these attacks” refers to the fact that (and here I advised you to switch off the mental image creating part of your brain):

from May until August 2013, the province has been the location of various acts of political violence involving the use of human faeces.

There have been over 100 of these attacks, and they result in regular closures of major roads (usually the N2) – something which affects everyone, least of all Helen Zille.
The dossier is helpfully presented in Microsoft PowerPoint (an appropriately crap means of sharing information), and can be seen online here.

Basically, the Province says that there are are a small number of poopetrators – 11 to be exact – who are instigating the poo protests:

One aspect of this campaign involves faeces attacks in various locations, including regularly blocking a major highway and access to the airport.
This spate of faeces attacks is clearly well-co-ordinated and politically-motivated, forming part of the ANC Youth League’s self-declared and oft-repeated “ungovernability campaign”. Today we are releasing information we have gathered and details of compelling evidence which shows just this.

shIt then goes on to list those who they believe have led these unpleasant attacks as:

  • Sithembele Majova
  • Sibusiso “Mqithi” Zonke
  • Nangamso “Kavin” Tshutha
  • Khaya Kama
  • Bongile Zanazo
  • Bongani Ncombolo
  • Andile Lili
  • Loyiso Nkohla
  • Mario Wanza
  • Sulyman Stellenboom
  • Songezo Mvandaba

And what have the local government done? Well, “as a first and appropriate step” they have informed the poolice service about it:

we have handed this information to the South African Police Service for further investigation. They must also obtain statements from the many eyewitnesses and the suspects themselves, subpoena their cellphone records (since they claim to organise via cellphones) and conduct normal police investigations. What we have is prima facie evidence as the basis for investigation. That is why we have submitted it to the police.

The Police, eh? Good thinking. I’m so glad that’s only taken you 3½ months to work out that this would be a good idea. I imagine that this will now all be completely sorted out by never.

And this marks the first of my posts to get the “elections” tag with reference to 2014.
Oh joy.

City to frack CPD?

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Wow. This is huge.

The contents of a previously confidential and completely fictitious City of Cape Town report which were revealed during routine business in the Western Cape High Court this morning look set to cause outrage across the city.
The report, commissioned late last year, outlines details of plans to move the Cenotaph from its present site on Adderley Street in the City Centre to a disused quarry on Chapman’s Peak Drive where it would be used as part of a hydraulic fracturing rig to extract the rich deposits of natural gas discovered at the site during preliminary survey work by the toll company Entilini last year.

The plan marries together three contentious issues which are described by the report’s anonymous author as “awkward problems which could prove potentially costly vote-wise at the next election, but which require addressing”. The author goes on to suggest that “tying the three together would likely limit the amount of negative PR generated by these issues should we address them separately”, but notes:

On face value, this plan makes good financial and political sense and makes the best of several difficult situations facing the City; namely, (a) that the position currently occupied by the Cenotaph is the preferred site for a MyCiti bus station, (b) that the City contract with Entilini requires that we must upgrade the Chapman’s Peak Drive toll plaza and a huge office park, and (c) that the natural gas deposits beneath Chapman’s Peak Drive are of such value that it would be foolish not to act upon them.
However, we should expect stiff opposition to each of these issues, given the historical significance of the Cenotaph, the emotional attachment of Hout Bay residents to Chapman’s Peak Drive, and the current negative publicity surrounding the process of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).

The report suggests that certain environmental and financial points regarding the plans should be emphasised in media releases and interviews, including:

  • The convenience and improved carbon footprint of public transport when compared to private cars.
  • The recycling of the Cenotaph material and the return of those stones to their natural home in a quarry.
  • The cleanliness of natural gas when compared to electricity from coal.
  • The offset of expensive costs of new toll plaza and first stages of the Entilini office park through selling natural gas fracked from the Chapman’s Peak Drive site.

The confidential report appears to have been distributed to appropriate departments within the municipality.
City officials were unable to comment on the report at the time of writing.

Watch this one folks – I have a feeling we’re going to be hearing a whole lot more about it.

City Falling Apart?

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Many people living in Cape Town gloat over the rest of the country, citing the efficiency of our DA-led City Council and Province as the main non-geological, non-geographical reason for their residence in the Mother City. And yes, when you compare it with Joburg and its rates bill debacle or Limpopo and its everything debacle, we look GREAT!. But then that’s like comparing drinking a poor red wine with being repeatedly punched in the head. Given the alternative, even that “horrible overly-alcoholic fruit-bomb” is going to seem fairly decent.

And that’s what Cape Town governance has been like for the past few years – a poor red wine that seems a whole lot better than a broken jaw and possible ocular contusion. We’ve excused the bad things because it could simply be so much worse. But suddenly the cracks are beginning to show. Potholes aren’t fixed, even when they’re reported. More and more traffic lights are going “a bit Gauteng” and flashing red for hours at a time. And the city implemented their new IT system “ISIS” apparently without actually checking that it worked.

How very Eastern Cape of them.

The upshot of this is that:

…the municipality’s Rates Clearance Department continues to labour under a backlog. The issuing of Rates Clearance Certificates, which would normally take 8 to 10 working days, remains a full month behind schedule – the financial implications of which are obvious to all involved.

And it’s meant that law firm Smith Tabata Buchanan Boyes has got in touch with the council (and Emperor Helen Zille, nogal) to express its displeasure and that of its clients:

The written response received from the Executive Deputy Mayor, Mr Ian Neilson, gives the assurance that the municipality is acutely aware of the problems that have occurred around Rates Clearance Certificates since the going live of the ISIS system and acknowledged the negative impact that the clearance backlog has, not only on the city’s economy, but also on the finalisation of property transactions. Mr Neilson assured us of the municipality’s determination to revert to its previous turnaround times as soon as possible.

That last line of Mr Neilson may just have well have been:

Yes, whatever. Now bugger off and stop annoying me.

But then at least he responded – probably more than you’d get from most municipalities.It’s just another indication of how the city is becoming less Capetonian and more Joburgesque every day. The DA are slipping, but they know that they can afford to, because everyone can remember and can still see just how bad the alternative is.

It’s a bit of a shoddy approach to things. Like it or not, the DA is slipping up more and more in Cape Town and it’s all rather disappointing for those of us forced to cough up rates for less and less service.