The City of Cape Town’s law enforcement structures under Councillor JP Smith are executing an anti-poor agenda, shaming the city, but mayor Dan Plato is too weak to stop the rot.
The demolition of homes in the middle of a rainstorm in Hangberg and now the eviction of naked Bulelani Qolani by City law enforcement officers – in winter, and in the middle of a pandemic requiring social distancing – are new lows for Smith. Former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela asked “what democracy forces a man to strip naked to retain a roof over his head? What kind of law enforcement ethos prioritises a man’s nakedness amid a biting winter over human dignity?”
Over the past 18 months, time and again under Plato’s sleepy watch, Smith’s goons have demonstrated total disregard for people of colour.
Among other outrages:
• Forcefully removing families celebrating the festive season on Clifton Beach;
• Targeting a mosque that has operated in District Six for decades after allegedly receiving a complaint that the Call to Prayer breached of noise regulations;
• Routinely harassing homeless people, issuing fines and confiscating their meagre possessions; and
• Their bullying of homeless people peaked during the coronavirus lockdown, with the establishment of the notorious Strandfontein camp, condemned by human rights, medical and community organisations.
The City’s proposal to amend the by-laws to give them the power to banish people from particular areas, and download information on their cellphones, is presently out for comment.
After Qolani’s humiliation, Plato’s attempt to defend the city police, saying that Qolani had chosen to humiliate himself, revealed an astonishing lack of understanding for the desperate circumstances in which many of our people live.
It shows that he is no more than a rubber stamp for Smith and his cronies’ divide-and-rule agenda.
Besides the humiliation, the cold and the pandemic, only Plato and Smith could be so deaf to the global response to racist police killing of George Floyd, in America. The picture of Qolani’s arrest rivals that of the policeman’s knee on Floyd’s neck as a symbol of inequality.
Both Plato and Smith must go.
GOOD Secretary-General Brett Herron, a lawyer and member of the Western Cape legislature, said both the Constitution and the law provided for City’s to establish law-enforcement structures to ensure compliance with municipal by-laws.
Smith had structured Cape Town’s law-enforcement arm like a mini-me version of the national police, Herron said.
This included a vice squad, a rental housing stock unit, a marine unit with its own rubber ducks, and an investigative arm called the Special Investigations Unit that also carried out intelligence functions.
“When Patricia de Lille was the mayor she was able to keep Smith on his leash. Under Plato, he has license to pursue his anti-transformation agenda.”
Speaking after his arrest, Qolani said his “dignity was ripped apart... I was dehumanised and put to shame in front of the whole world”.
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