Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign

Today the Mitchell’s Plain Town Centre traders have reached a boiling point. City officials are still continuing to have meetings with an unconstitutional body in the Town Centre.

Traders are still not certain when they will be evicted. We work each day with the possibility that our livelihoods will be stolen from us by the mere people who claim they provide us with freedoms. The traders have sent emails to Mayor Dan Plato and Premier Hellen Zille regarding a collaborative meeting, but still to this day there has been no response. If provincial and local governments are meant to assist communities then this requires Dan Plato and Hellen Zille to also do their jobs.

Town Centre Traders are in the dark about the future of their own workplace. We have been told briefly that the management of the Town Centre will be given to formal business, but this does not make sense. The bays to which the management is imposing to move the traders have already been numbered with metal plaques. The umbrella body of the traders is aware of this, but the traders whom they claim to represent are not aware. The traders have made multiple objections to the opaque renovation process, the fact that the move only allows space for half of the +/-1000 current Town Centre traders, the move of the city to proceed with the process full knowing the objections of the traders and the city’s agenda of upgrading the Town Centre as an area for private investors instead of for its own people. Amongst these objections and many others, city official Richard Hollstock is telling the traders that if they are unhappy with the process they can fight the issue in the Cape High Court.

That’s a slap in our faces!

We will not stand for this mistreatment and will continue to fight this just cause for the traders and our freedoms.

For further information, please contact Mischka Cassiem at 0731286657