Now Ehrenreich targets “racist fires”

After his extraordinary claims that the new Cape Town cycle lanes were racist:

Cosatu is outraged that the DA in the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town prioritises bicycle lanes for the white wealthy citizens, while poorer communities on the Cape Flats are subjected to over-crowded and unsafe public transport

Cosatu provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich has now gone even further, suggesting that wildfires in the peninsular “are only found in well off, white neighbourhoods”.

This follows last night’s huge blaze at Oudekraal between Camps Bay and Llandudno: two of Cape Town’s most exclusive suburbs. Ehrenreich stated:

Take a look at the Oudekraal fire yesterday. If we consider the location of that fire and we extrapolate it to the wider metropole, then it is clear to see that 100% of the veldfires in the Cape Town area are in or close to wealthy white areas. This is an appalling disparity and Cosatu is outraged that the DA in the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town prioritises wildfires to these areas while  poorer communities on the Cape Flats aren’t subjected to any fires at all.

Ehrenreich backed up his statistics by indicating that when considering the Oudekraal blaze, it could clearly be noted that there were no fires in areas such as Khayelitsha or Grassy Park – and this despite the fact that the latter was really very grassy and could have gone up at any time.

The Oudekraal fire was only in Oudekraal – in our view, the evidence is conclusive.

This dichotomy only existed, said Ehrenreich, so that the Provincial and Municipal DA could use fire-fighting equipment and personnel in these areas to “impress their white voters”:

They’ve got a shiny new helicopter and they want to show it off

When asked if he could provide any further examples of Provincial monies being used in supposedly racist ways, Ehrenreich was quick to point out that Cosatu had evidence that more than 98% of the Western Cape Provincial paper budget was spent on white paper.
Asked if Cosatu had looked into the stationery budgets of other (ANC-led) Provincial governments, he accused the reporter of trying to change the subject and then said that the interview had to end as he had to attend an(other) appointment at a local private hospital.

6 thoughts on “Now Ehrenreich targets “racist fires”

  1. He obviously has not seen the cycle lanes in Athlone, Nyanga etc. and significant investments in NMT projects.

    The West Coast route is in fact an Atlantis-CBD route, not a Bayside route. Phase 1 is priority bus, and cycle lanes all the way up to the poor of Atlantis, who have not had decent public transport, and have no foreseeable future rail link, eventhough rail lines do exit.

    http://www.capetown.gov.za and click on Supply Chain Management, and various tenders will show where exactly NMT projects have taken place, including bridges, pedestrian lanes, and other basic improvements.

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