http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1002883
Click here for video footage of the protest and here to see how this memorandum delivered in Orange Farm connects to that delivered to Yakoob Baig by the Kennedy Road Development Committee back on 14 September 2005.
Orange Farm wants promises kept
Thabo Mkhize Published:May 20, 2009
ANGRY residents of Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg, yesterday barricaded a busy road with rocks and burning tyres to protest against government’s poor service delivery.
This was the first service delivery protest to take place since President Jacob Zuma took office two weeks ago. Residents of the township demanded that pre-election promises should be delivered, and soon.
Protesters, who began blocking roads at 2am, claimed their area has been neglected and demanded that the newly appointed Gauteng premier, Nomvula Mokonyane, pay the area a visit to see it for herself.
Protest leader Xolani Nkosi, 29, warned government that worse was to come if it failed to address their grievances.
“What we did today was small; we’re going to do worse things. They can shoot us if they want to, all we are doing is fighting for service delivery,” he said.
Nkosi said that a memorandum outlining their grievances had been given to local councillor Silwayiphi Mkhize, who was given until Saturday to come up with a plan to resolve their problems.
He claimed several protesters were shot at and injured by police, a claim denied by police spokesman Inspector Molefe Mokoena.
“No one has been arrested, no shots fired and no one was injured,” Mokoena said.
Gift Gwebu, another aggrieved resident, said: “Before the elections they put up street lights but since we’ve voted everything has stopped. We are will cause chaos,” Gwebu said.
He said residents were angry that R52-million had been budgeted to improve service delivery in the area, but residents still faced health risks from burst sewage pipes, which flooded the neighbourhood with effluent.
In the memorandum protesters called on Mkhize to resign within two weeks or “we, ourselves will declare that Ward Two does not have a councillor”.