Thousands take to the street to protest looming evictions
Under the watchful eyes of armed police officers, thousands of Angelo informal settlement residents marched to the Boksburg Civic Centre to hand over a memorandum of grievances.
The horde was marching in protest against their proposed imminent eviction from their homes located on privately-owned property.
Waving placards, banners and wielding sticks, residents marched through Main Reef Road, into Trichardts Road, before making their way to the municipal premises in the CBD, where they handed over the memorandum to Vincent Hlatshwayo from the office of the MMC for Corporate and Shared Services, Phelisa Nkunjana.
Hlatshwayo promised the massive crowd that they (his office) will take a look at the memorandum and see what can be fixed, and then get the relevant departments on board, including those that are dealing with water, electricity and solid waste.
The protesters gave the metro seven working days to respond to their demands, and vowed to take further steps should the metro fail to address the problems urgently.
“If government continues to drag its feet, we will arrange for another march, and march to the Ekurhuleni Council in Germiston,” said one of the community leaders, Solly Nonyane.
Nonyane said that people have been living in the area for more than two decades, but no action has been taken to improve their living conditions. Instead they are being threatened with eviction.
“Capitalists don’t consider the poor. They put profit before poor people, they don’t care about us. Asisyi ndawo! (We are going nowhere) unless they provide us with houses and basic services within 10km from where we live now,” added Nonyane.
While at the civic centre, ward 33 Clr Hilary Coke put in an appearance, but was advised by some of the community leaders to not speak to the crowd at that moment.
She, however, promised that she will soon meet with the community and respond to some of the allegations levelled against her by community leaders.
Nonyane accused Coke of not caring about them (resident) and is doing nothing to address the problems in the informal settlements.
The march was held peacefully. – @FanieBoksburg
Watch the following videos:
There is a lot of things we also want but we had to work for it and that is also how we’ve thought our children thats the reason they can be independent