Protesting residents of Alexandra arrived at the Regional Offices in Sandton to hand over their memorandum of demands but were barred by the police from entering the premises.
The planned strike by residents of Alexandra into Sandton took place on Monday, 8 April 2019, and the residents are reportedly outside the City of Johannesburg Regional Offices in Sandton. The residents cited a lack of service delivery and action from authorities to prevent illegal structures in their community as some of the reasons for the march.
Speaking at the side lines of the march in Sandton, African National Congress (ANC) ward councillor Tefo Raphadu said the community of Alexandra felt neglected by the government. He said that the community wants its grievances addressed by mayor Herman Mashaba.
“The community has made it loud and clear that they want either Mashaba or the speaker to come and address them. We don’t want a deputy regional director because she has failed us.
“This is the second march we have led to the regional offices and she has not responded to some of the issues and we feel neglected as the community of Alex,” said Raphadu.
Raphadu also highlighted that there was a sense of disregard and a lack of care in the way the community of Alexandra has been treated by the City.
“Today we were supposed to have a councillor forum to thrash out some of the issues that are plaguing the community, but they cancelled the meeting without consulting anybody and it shows the disregard in the way they treat the community. They don’t care. They don’t stay in Alex, so the plight of the people is a ‘by the way’ issue [to them],” he said.
Meanwhile, the leader of the #AlexTotalShutdown movement, Sandile Mavundla, has chastised the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) Gauteng premier candidate Solly Msimanga for opening a case of incitement of violence against the protesting residents. Msimanga claimed that the protests were not related to service delivery but were the brainchild of the ANC “in order to influence the outcome of the general elections.”
“We are not the ANC, we are the community. There is no case against the community. It is an element of the apartheid regime. If the community of Alexandra must be arrested on the case based on Solly’s evidence, it will show that apartheid is still working in South Africa. We have the right to picket and to strike,” he said.
Abenathi Gqomo
a.gqomo@politicalanalysis.co.za
