Police watchdog, Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID ) says it is still unclear who shot and killed two protesters in Caledon in the Overberg area of the Western Cape.
A post morterm will likely shed more light on the deaths. Residents living in the Riemvasmaak informal settlement continued with protest in the area on Friday, demanding land, water and sanitation.
The Theewaterskloof Municipality says the protest by residents is illegal. It says they had been given permission to march on Tuesday next week.
The deputy mayor, Isaac Sileku, has sent his condolences to the victims’ families. He says the municipality is looking into the residents’ demands.
“We have said we need to budget for our informal settlement areas because we could find it in all our unrest that there was the issue of sanitation but unfortunately we don’t have the money. But we took it upon ourselves as the municipality to make sure that in the next financial year that we budget for sanitation while we are still busy in the process of planning for our informal settlement areas in terms of how we are going to develop them going forward,” says Sileku.
Angry residents say they want answers on how the two protesters died on Thursday. They vowed to continue their action until their demands are met.
“The residents have been constantly talking to the municipality about service delivery particularly the availability of land people are staying in informal settlement which are over crowded the municipality has promised to make land available for the people and the municipality has promised to make serviced plots available to the people and the people are just tired of waiting,” says community leader, Ntobeko Jende.
Meanwhile, IPID says the firearms of all the police, security guards and law enforcement have been confiscated and taken for ballistic testing.
Police are monitoring the situation in the area.
