{"id":164202,"date":"2020-09-01T20:15:10","date_gmt":"2020-09-01T18:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/plato-accused-of-recruiting-whites-to-help-against-land-invaders\/"},"modified":"2020-09-01T20:15:10","modified_gmt":"2020-09-01T18:15:10","slug":"plato-accused-of-recruiting-whites-to-help-against-land-invaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/plato-accused-of-recruiting-whites-to-help-against-land-invaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Plato accused of recruiting whites to help against \u201cland invaders\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cape Town Mayor Dan Plato has been slammed for a message about \u201cland invasions\u201d in a recent advertisement in local papers. Archive photo: Masixole Feni<\/p>\n

Cape Town mayor Dan Plato is trying to enlist the help of white middle-class residents against black land \u201cinvaders\u201d, a group of veteran social activists have said.<\/p>\n

The nine veterans \u2014 Mary Burton, Judy and Julian Cook, Horst Kleinschmidt, Di Oliver, Gareth Rossiter, Hilary and Roger Southall, and Elizabeth van Heyningen \u2014 were responding in an open letter to a message from Plato published in a full-page advertisement taken by the City of Cape Town in local community newspapers on 20 August. The message was headed \u201cLand Invasions Undermine Housing Programmes\u201d and was accompanied by a smaller second piece that had the headline \u201cR1.3 billion in housing projects under threat of invasion\u201d.<\/p>\n

The activists say the message appeared to be directed at mainly white, middle-class, well-off residents living in suburbia, and that it is \u201cclearly aimed to warn and enlist the help of those well-off residents against the black invaders\u201d.<\/p>\n

Plato addressed his message to \u201cDear Residents\u201d and started by saying: \u201cThe City of Cape Town thanks residents for reporting illegal land invasion attempts and for working with us to uphold the rule of law in our city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe invasions taking place on land earmarked for housing undermines law-abiding people who have waited patiently for many years on the housing list for their brick-and-mortar houses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City is doing everything possible to stop what appears to be primarily orchestrated and politically motivated invasions of our private property.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their open letter response, the nine veterans accuse Plato of aiming his message at a limited audience of mainly well-off whites living in the suburbs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no sense in the whole of the letter that your concerns are being put to the many hundreds of thousands of our citizens who live precarious lives in informal shelters around the city \u2026 There is nothing in your letter to suggest that you are consulting fully with leaders among those you accuse of organised invasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plato says in his message it\u2019s clear that current land invasions are \u201chighly coordinated and organised\u201d and that the City has received widespread reports of \u201cshack farming\u201d in which plots of public land are illegally sold for R1,000 or more each.<\/p>\n

\u201cCriminality on this scale cannot be tolerated in our society \u2026 The social consequences of land invasions are too devastating for this illegal act to be condoned \u2026 Many thousands of law-abiding residents are silently bearing the severe impact of land invasions due to the unlawful actions of a relatively small group of people who occupy land illegally.<\/p>\n

\u201cRest assured that your City will keep standing up for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

His message ends with a heading \u201cAnonymous tip-offs welcome\u201d and contact numbers.<\/p>\n

The veteran activists accuse Plato of being disingenuous when he argues that land \u201cinvaders\u201d are undermining \u201claw-abiding people who have waited patiently many years on the housing list\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone knows that the housing list gets longer every year and that the chances of getting formal houses for the large majority of those waiting patiently, are nil. They will die before they receive their allocation,\u201d they write.<\/p>\n

They also tackle the mayor for \u201cconcentrating entirely on the idea that the invasions are \u2018orchestrated and politically motivated\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing in your communication that asks \u2018Why are people so discontented that they are prepared to put themselves at risk by being part of an invasion?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cTo us, the answer is obvious: there are thousands of people who have been waiting just for a place to live of secure tenure, let alone a reasonably permanent structure. They have run out of patience. Undoubtedly Covid-19 has augmented their sense of urgency and they want a safer place for their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

The veterans also query why Plato does not name those he claims are responsible for orchestrating land invasions and why he refers to \u201copportunistic political groupings\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is that, if it is not a group of very discontented people getting together and deciding that with the almost complete incompetence of the authorities to make space in the city available for them, they will take the law into their own hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

They take issue with Plato for concentrating on the illegalities of land occupations such as \u201cshack farming\u201d and backyard evictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a typical strategy of right wing government leadership, such as that of President Trump in relation to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, of deflecting attention from the real, serious issues which the demonstrations and invasions point to, by focussing on fringe criminal elements,\u201d they write. \u201cSimilarly, we believe that to call the invasions large-scale \u2018criminality\u2019 is aimed to muddle the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The veteran activists say they are offended by the mayor\u2019s attempt to enlist them in his \u201caggressive campaign\u201d by asking them to report signs of invasion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City of Cape Town is the body responsible for the manner in which the city grows in accommodating its new citizens. It has done woefully in meeting that responsibility \u2013 as any drive around the Cape Flats and the current situation of more than 400,000 families living in inadequate housing, shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cCapable civil servants on the Council are crushed by over-powerful mayoral committees, so that there is an awful paucity of ideas and the mayoral committees, in turn, are in the pockets of developers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe procedural bureaucracy is so lengthy that by the time any actual housing begins to be delivered, tens of thousands of new people are in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

The veterans acknowledge that the national government is partly to blame because it has continued to work with out-dated apartheid-style housing policies, but the City, they say, has done nothing to provide leadership in meeting the massive housing demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t even have a coherent plan. And now it wants us to be its spies and whistle-blowers. It\u2019s completely unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n