Tempers flare
2005-03-02
Malané Bosman
SQUATTERS on the banks of the Berg River refused to have their belongings removed by municipal law enforcers on Friday, opting instead to block a main thoroughfare in central Paarl with their furniture and cooking utensils.
Operation Clean-up started amiably enough behind the mosque at 08:00 that morning. Members of the khaki-clad unit, recently deployed in Drakenstein to enforce municipal regulations, waited for orders in the shade of the giant blue-gum trees.
The people of “Walletjies”, as the illegal inhabitants of the river bank call themselves, were busy with their morning ablutions.
They knew why the men and women with the shiny boots and the two-way radios were there. But they chose not to remember the oral warnings they had been given to pack up their belongings and move.
Then the municipal tractor and trailer arrived. And chaos erupted.
“Where are you taking our things,” a woman from Namaqualand demanded.
“To the night shelter,” the law enforcement supervisor, Jacques Cyster replied, as his unit members were lashed by the tongues and even the fists of the homeless.
A woman shouted angrily: “First the Boere, and now the Khakis.”
Then she grabbed a bucket with crockery and cutlery and smashed it into the oncoming traffic on the Berg River Boulevard.
Before the law enforcers could react, the squatters had barricaded the street with furniture and the remainder of their belongings.
Traffic had to be rerouted via Van der Lingen Street while the angry crowd demanded that they see a town councillor.
Calm was restored when police Insp Koos van der Merwe and members of the Area Crime Prevention Unit arrived on the scene.”
The municipal law enforcers (who resort under the traffic department) cleared the Boulevard of the rubble. A decision on the future of the people living on the river bank without any amenities, will now have to be taken in council chambers.
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