Kimberley service delivery protest turns violent

A protest in Kimberley’s Greenpoint township in the Northern Cape has turned violent with police firing rubber bullets at protestors who are retaliating with stones.

The protest is the second to break out this week with protests held Galeshewe and Roodepan townships.

The protestors are demanding that the under-fire Sol Plaatje Municipality immediately addresses service delivery issues in the area, including raw sewage flowing in yards and a lack of sanitation and cleansing.

The protestors have vowed to continue protesting until their demands are met. Here are what some protestors had to say:

“It’s not fair for people to live in houses where you can’t even sit and eat a Sunday meal because there is sewage flowing out everywhere. It’s inhuman for us to live in these conditions,” laments one of the protesters.

Another one says, “We are only asking for service delivery, infrastructure in Greenpoint. That’s all we are asking. One of the constitutional rights is that we have a right to water. We have a right to live. We have a right to everything but we don’t know anymore. We are animals or what?”

“We are taking to the streets up until the President comes down or else, they’ll have to arrest us all.”

Kimberley residents protest over poor service delivery: 

The Northern Cape provincial government recently announced an R500 million infrastructure plan, which is expected to address service delivery issues in the municipality.

Spokesperson for the premier, Bronwyn Thomas-Abrahams, has urged protesting communities to give the municipality time to roll out the plan.

“Immediately after announcing an R500 million intervention programme to basically fix up Sol Plaatje Municipality, you now see an intensification of strike action across the city. That is really one that doesn’t make sense to us. We can actually go as far as saying it seems to us that another agenda is at play here.”