#Blikkiesdorp10: EFF stands with Blikkiesdorp residents – 10 years of DA lies
How “temporary” is a Temporary Relocation Area? If you’re the City of Cape Town, temporary is double-speak for permanent.
The Residents of the Blikkiesdorp Temporary Relocation Area (TRA) have enough reason to be angry. These people today marched to the Civic Centre of the City of Cape Town (CoCT) to voice their grievances around their appalling living conditions.
This TRA currently houses about 2000 people. It consists mostly of families that were forcefully evicted from Hangberg, Symphony Way in Delft and Mitchells Plain. Others were evicted from their flats in Salt River ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and were left to choose between homelessness and a shack.
Today, 10 years later, most of these people are still living in this overcrowded, gang-infested squatter-camp that they were assured was “temporary”.
10 years of DA rule = 10 years of DA lies = 10 years of Blikkiesdorp.
Bernard Joseph, Chairperson of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in the Western Cape personally joined the marchers at their protest in front of the Civic today.
Joseph says these people moved to Blikkiesdorp on the promises made to them by the then Executive Mayor of the City of Cape Town, Dan Plato. Plato promised them that their housing will be prioritised.
Plato lied because after almost 10 years these people are still living in squalor, and to their own devises what health and safety aspects is concerned.
Joseph says a final scoping report for the airport’s runway realignment-project was made public in June last year. This document outlined a number of concerns such as increase in noise, air and groundwater pollution for various communities that includes Blikkiesdorp. Consultants was contracted who recommended further relocation.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was then signed between ACSA and the CoCT. All attempts by the community to access the terms of the relocation process as stipulated in the MOU was unsuccessful.
Joseph says the EFF will now mobilize with the residents of Blikkiesdorp against this cold autocratic style of governance which the DA-led City of Cape Town maintain towards these residents. We reserve the right to act on behalf of our impoverished and struggling people. Its time for the people of Blikkiesdorp to rise as one and demand that the DA delivers on its decade long promise of houses for the people that they themselves have dispossessed of dignity and land.
This statement was released by the Office of the Chairperson of the Economic Freedom Fighters in the Western Cape, Bernard Joseph.
