A group of protesters belonging to lobby group Black People National Crisis Committee staged a protest at the Clifton Fourth beach on Friday evening, slaughtering a sheep as part of a cleansing ceremony. They were met by a group of animal rights activists who tried in vain to prevent the slaughter.
Deputy Police Minister Bongani Mkhongi also visited the beach and says public spaces must be shared.
“In 1989 I was a small boy I was here, I wanted to enter. It was a defiance campaign… I think you were in Cape Town you still remember that bitten by dogs here, and other people who were white were swimming here, and they didn’t allow us to swim here because we are black. We cannot allow that to happen in 2018. We must make sure that we defend our people – we must share these spaces. These are our spaces, if a person wants a beach he must build his own beach at the back of his house.”
However, Cape Town Mayor, Dan Plato, says the current uproar around Clifton Fourth beach is politically motivated.
This follows an incident where beach-goers say they were told to leave the beach on Sunday, allegedly by security officers from the company Professional Protection Alternatives (PPA) saying that the beach closes at eight o’clock.
In response, the PPA said it was acting under the authority of the City of Cape Town – but the city denies this.
Plato says political parties are set on racially dividing the people of Cape Town.
“I just get a sense that, specifically happening within Cape Town society, that certain political parties drive a situation into a racial corner. They drive that racial wedge. They’ve got no other issue to talk about, to debate about. My office and I, as the Executive Mayor of the City of Cape Town, we just cannot agree with that narrative,” says Plato.
Meanwhile, Civil Society movement South Africa First Forum, says it has laid a charge of fraud at the Cape Town Central Police Station against PPA.
Advocate Rod Solomons says the company indicated that it acted under the authority of the City of Cape Town, but the City issued a statement saying it was untrue.
Solomons says they also wrote to the private security regulatory authority, PRISA, to investigate the conduct of PPA.
“We laid a fraud charge with the SAPS to investigate the matter, because we want to get to the truth of this. And if anyone has been found to be complicit or have broken the law, they need to be held accountable and there must be consequences for their actions,” says Solomons.
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