True Colours: Alpha DA And FF+ Dinosaurs Squash George Integration And Show Who’s Boss

GOOD Statement by Brett Herron
GOOD Secretary General & Member Of Parliament

30 August 2022

Deputy Mayor of the Garden Route District Municipality, Gert van Niekerk (FF+), and Mayor of George, Leon van Wyk (DA), are working together to prop up the legacy of the apartheid- era Group Areas Act in George.

They don’t want what they regard as their pristine suburbs, formerly reserved for whites, contaminated by people who are poorer than them – which happens to rule out the overwhelming majority of people of colour.

In leaked voice-notes, Van Niekerk said that if a proposal to develop affordable housing in downtown George proceeded it “would make George a target for low-cost housing in affluent neighbourhoods”.

Van Niekerk said that he, Van Wyk and a number of councillors agreed that the proposed development “would negatively affect our property values, traffic, water and sewerage networks” – and vowed that the proposal would not see the light of day.

The DA and FF+ are in coalition in both the George and Garden Route District Municipalities, so there is nothing peculiar about Van Niekerk and Van Wyk’s speaking with one voice.

What does make it peculiar is that the proposal was being championed by Van Niekerk’s direct boss, the Mayor of the Garden Route District Municipality Memory Booysen (DA), and Western Cape MEC for Human Settlements, Tertuis Simmers (the interim DA provincial leader).

“The truth we all know about the DA is that its elevates people of colour to senior positions without empowering them to do anything without permission from their real bosses,” explained Donovan Saptoe, a GOOD Councillor in George.

“What Booysen and Simmers are being taught here is where real power resides in this part of the world,” Saptoe said.

The question is, for how long do the likes of Van Niekerk and Van Wyk believe that sustaining the model of spatial injustice inherited from the past is sustainable?

For how long do they believe that people of colour will accept that they’re not good enough to live in our inner cities, or near to their places of work, and must continue to live on the under-serviced fringes?

Surely, even dinosaurs will understand that the best security for their property investments is not higher walls in separate areas, but delinking race and space, overcoming their prejudices, and beginning to develop integrated, sustainable, forward-thinking communities,

Most of the DA’s top leaders of colour have turned their back on the party over the past three or four years. It is because they couldn’t breathe with leaders of the like of Van Wyk and his FF+ broeders kneeling on their necks.

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