“Enough is enough. The bucket toilets are the DA’s way of bringing back apartheid.”
|||Cape Town - A police escort carrying Premier Helen Zille and guests was targeted on Tuesday by protesters, who flung buckets of human waste at the convoy as it left an official event in Khayelitsha.
The “110 percent green” event was hosted at an indoor hall in Harare.
After the event, Zille was whisked out the back door by police to a waiting car.
But protesters were quick and managed to empty buckets of raw sewage on every vehicle in the convoy, including the vehicle carrying Zille, as well as a bus that had earlier ferried people to the event.
Police fired stun grenades to disperse the protesters and two people were arrested during the commotion.
“Two people, aged 23 and 26, from Khayelitsha, have been arrested for public violence,” said police spokesman Colonel Tembinkosi Kinana. “They are due to appear in the Khayelitsha Magistrate’s Court (on Wednesday).”
The protest came after ANC Youth League members emptied five portaloos full of human waste on the steps outside the provincial legislature in Wale Street on Monday.
Zille was in Khayelitsha to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the launch of the Western Cape government’s “green” campaign. The initiative supports organisations promoting green businesses such as community gardens and creating jobs in their communities.
The event was attended by owners of local “green” businesses, whose cars were also smeared with faeces.
About an hour into the event, protesters started singing Struggle songs outside the main entrance. Some of them rolled out blankets and emptied portaloos full of sewage on the blankets.
Protesters carried placards reading: “Zille must not come here with a legacy of apartheid in our ward 98. Can you relieve yourself in a bucket as a human being?”
Former ANC councillor and suspended youth league member Andile Lili, who was among the protesters, said Zille was carrying out the legacy of apartheid.
“Enough is enough. The bucket toilets are the DA’s way of bringing back apartheid,” Lili charged.
“It’s inspired by what was established by their forefathers. We want to show the whole world that the city is not providing services to black people. We will continue to embarrass her (Zille) until such a time that there are no more bucket systems.”
Zak Mbhele, Zille’s spokesman, said on Tuesday that legal charges would be filed against all ANCYL members who spilled faeces and urine outside the legislature’s main entrance on Monday.
ANC proportional councillor and youth league member Loyiso Nkohla said Zille was “taking black people for fools” if she expected them to carry on using “dehumanising open-air toilets”.
“She (Zille) expects our people to relieve themselves in front of their children,” Nkohla said.
“Imagine how embarrassing it must be for a woman to sit on a porta-loo? She will send the police to arrest us but we are ready and will fight the racist madam.”
Mbhele said “the boorish behaviour of a rabble-rousing minority” would not deter the premier from attending events in the township.
“These incidents are an exact, if somewhat odorous, reflection of the state of the ANC Youth League and its leadership in the Western Cape: in deep doo-doo,” he said.
Regional ANCYL chairman Khaya Yozi said he was not aware of the involvement of any of its members.
“We approve and give notice ahead of any programmes. When we are embarking on a programme, we call media and all media houses and let them know about a protest or march. We did not organise this,” he said.
Meanwhile, Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille and the city’s mayoral committee member for utility services, Ernest Sonnenberg, are expected to brief the media on the city’s rollout of the portable flush toilets on Wednesday.
nontando.mposo@inl.co.za
Cape Argus