Bonteheuwel residents and Mayor De Lille trade accusations

Even who organised the meeting and what it was supposed to be about is disputed.

De Lille released a statement saying she convened “a community meeting in Bonteheuwel to give residents an overview of the Backyarder Programme that we [are] currently implementing in the area, and rolling out across the City of Cape Town for those who are residing in the backyards of council rental units.”

But Judy Kennedy, a spokesperson for an organisation called the Joint Peace Forum (JPF), told GroundUp the JPF organised the meeting. She said that Bonteheuwel residents wanted the meeting to discuss the way the City was implementing programmes for backyarders without first consulting the residents. She said the meeting was disrupted by “cronies” of the ward councillor. Footage on Eye Witness News, as well as photographs on Facebook do show a small group of people with anti-JPF placards disrupting the meeting. Kennedy said that the JPF had stuck messages on the wall of the room identifying the key problems residents wanted the City to address. But, she says, Mayoral Committee Member Ernest Sonnenberg told the meeting that these issues were not the purpose of the meeting. This apparently caused the nearly packed hall full of residents to become upset.

De Lille, on the other hand, describes the JPF as a “group of five or six people”. She accuses them of “violently” breaking up “this meeting where more than 500 beneficiaries of the Backyarder Programme came to listen.” When we asked the mayor’s spokesperson, Pierrinne Leukes, about the photographic and video evidence showing anti-JPF protesters disrupting the meeting, she told us that occurred after members of the JPF continuously interrupted De Lille and made it impossible for her to speak to the residents.

De Lille wrote that the secretary of the JPF “is living in comfort with services provided by the City of Cape Town, yet along with her handful of followers is determined to deprive people living in backyards from the same services.”

Kennedy on the other hand told GroundUp, “One day we saw these ugly electricity poles being erected as part of the project to provide electricity to backyard dwellers. As JPF we are not opposed to service delivery, but we want to be part of decision making.” She said that there are backyard dwellers in the JPF. She also said there are “three or four [City] projects in the area with absolutely no community participation.” Kennedy said contractors’ rubble from one of these projects was strewn about, and that a woman had been hurt when she fell into a trench in the pavement that was dug as part of one of the projects. She also said that the JPF is not interested in party politics. “But the challenges are political so we will take on whoever needs to be taken on to address these issues.”

The opposing narratives of what happened last night are told on the Facebook pages of De Lille and a page titled The Official Bonteheuwel Group. De Lille suggests in her statement that the JPF is a front for Tony Ehrenreich and the ANC. However, there are numerous angry comments on Facebook directed at the mayor, suggesting that more than a handful of Bonteheuwel residents are upset with her.

Bonteheuwel residents on Facebook accuse De Lille of insulting them. They allege De Lille said the following (some of this is translated from Afrikaans):

• Voetsek
• Who are you to ask questions, we are the government, we will do as we please and do not have to ask anyone’s permission to do so
• Bonteheuwel residents could not vote against apartheid regime but now you want to fight with a legitimate institution
• You are all ANC

GroundUp has asked the mayor’s office to confirm whether she said any of these things. In response, the mayor’s office wrote, “From the beginning [JPF] were shouting and refused to sit down. Some beneficiaries arrived to protest against the JPF. The mayor then appealed to both groups to sit down in an effort to restore calm. She did not swear at anyone. This is very clearly a disagreement between the JPF, who have decided to speak on behalf on the community with no mandate to do so, and the beneficiaries who are in need of services.”

Unfortunately, not enough of the meeting appears to have been filmed (or footage is not yet in the public domain) to determine what the real course of events was, who said what, whether or not the JPF disrupted De Lille, whether or not De Lille used abusive language, and who was representing what positions.