The City of Cape Town says it’s doing all it can to clear spaces in the CBD from illegal occupation similar to foreign nationals that camped outside the Green Market Square over the past five months.
They were occupying space outside the Central Methodist Church demanding to leave South Africa.
They started protesting outside the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) offices before they were forcefully removed and were subsequently accommodated at the church.
The City then obtained a court order to remove them from that location.
Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, JP Smith says “The City of Cape Town is involved in numerous urban regeneration projects through the mayor’s urban regeneration programme and other interventions but I don’t think we anticipated having to apply our minds to what happens in the CBD and the Green Market Square in the way that we were forced to in the last month.”
In this video, foreign nationals are removed from the street:
‘No hope’
Meanwhile, foreign nationals living inside the Central Methodist Church in Cape Town say they have no hope of getting the South African government to repatriate them. They have been staying in the church building for about five months.
Their attempts to get government and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to send them home or to other countries have failed.
A spokesperson for the people inside the church, Caroline Chemi says they will stay put for now as they have nowhere else to go.
“Our hope is to be replaced out of South Africa because here we don’t have hope again. You know this thing is happening even now; this thing is still happening there and if you see Johannesburg today is this one today is the other one. This thing is real in South Africa.”
