STATEMENT BY BRETT HERRON, GOOD MEMBER OF THE WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL PARLIAMENT AND SECRETARY-GENERAL
18 March 2021
The High Court’s condemnation of the City of Cape Town’s efforts to cover-up events at the concentration camp it erected for homeless people in Strandfontein, during the first Covid lockdown last year, is fundamentally important to arrest ever-increasing inequality in one of the world’s most unequal cities.
The City interred approximately 2000 homeless people at the Strandfontein site, at enormous and inexplicable expense, and successfully obtained a court interdict to block Human Rights Commission, civil society and political party monitors from gaining access to the site.
Judge Siraj Desai’s judgement yesterday sternly criticised the City’s treatment of human rights monitors and dismissed the interdict.
Had the judge left the interdict intact it would have effectively afforded the City carte blanche to carry out its anti-poor policies without being held accountable by opposition politicians or Chapter Nine institutions.
The GOOD Party reiterates its call on the City for transparency on the true events that unfolded in Strandfontein a year ago.
We also call on the Office of the Auditor-General to establish if the R56 million spent on the aborted six-week camp justified the price tag. It seems fairly obvious that, at the price, it would have made more sense to accommodate the people in the relative safety and comfort of hotels.
The City of Cape Town should know that it cannot prevent Chapter Nine institutions carrying out their constitutionally mandated duties.
It should know that it doesn’t have the right to act as a latter day Gestapo, bullying the poor and heaping indignity on indignity.
It should realise that the levels of inequality in our society are not sustainable, and begin to focus on the meaning of developing a city for all.
Ends…