“Ek is gatvol!” said Nabe Arend, a 77-year-old Bo-Kaap resident who came out in the cold on Thursday morning to demand affordable housing.

She was one of about 30 people (majority women) who blocked off the intersection between Wale and Buitengracht streets as part of the backyarders shutdown protest organised by so-called pro-brown “pressure group” Gatvol Capetonians.

Arend, who is a pensioner, has been living in Bo-Kaap her entire life, but says she is struggling with the cost of living in the area due to gentrification.

“Because of these high-rise buildings, the rates are killing us!” she said angrily.

“The pension is R1,800 and I have to pay between R1,200 and R1,300 for the City council rates.”

Fifty-four-year-old Fatima Price, another resident, said many of the houses in Bo-Kaap are overcrowded.

“We have 22 to 30 people living in one house. People sleep in kitchens, in the walkway to the rooms, in dining rooms. In summer they sleep on the stoeps because there is no place for them to sleep,” said Price.

She feels that the City of Cape Town is trying to push the people of Bo-Kaap out of the former ‘coloured’ area as classified under apartheid.

“They don’t want the Bo-Kaap people here, because they want to build big developments.”

The small group of protesters was monitored by police officers, including City of Cape Town Law Enforcement, metro and traffic police and SAPS Public Order Policing. At one point, a metro police officer asked the protestors to clear the intersection. The protesters refused, but the exchange was peaceful.

Bo Kaap residents say they are fed up with the lack of housing in the area, during the Backyarders Shutdown protest in Cape Town on 8 August 2019. Photo: Sandisiwe Shoba.

Ishmail Davids, who’s been living in Bo-Kaap for more than 68 years, felt that the police should not infringe on the residents’ right to protest.

“We are not in the apartheid era anymore, we now have the right to protest and we have the right to voice our opinion. Whether they’re gonna listen to it or not, doesn’t matter, the point is, it is my right,” he said.

Bo-Kaap has a serious housing shortage, with many residents who’ve been on the waiting list for up to 20 years. In March this year, Daily Maverick reported that the provincial department of Human Settlements had announced plans for affordable housing in Bo-Kaap, the CBD, and the wealthier areas of Oranjezicht and Tamboerskloof. There is no reported timeline for when these houses will be built.

“There’s plenty of empty plots here that the council can build houses for these people that were born here,” said Arend, pointing to empty land behind the Bo-Kaap houses at the foot of the mountain.

The protests, labelled “backyarders shutdown”, began at 5am on Thursday and was set to end at 11am after Gatvol Capetonians circulated a message on social media, inviting communities across the Cape Flats to demand housing for “brown people”. Thirteen communities participated, including Parkwood, Kensington and Mitchell’s Plain.

“Over the past week, we have been engaging poor and landless communities across the metro, the focal point being the backyards crisis government turns a blind eye to,” the message read.

“The objective of the shutdown is to expose government’s failure to deal with our landless, in terms of failure to deliver… meet deadlines and its purposeful failure to spend the housing budget,” it continued.

The main issues being protested against were:

• The lack of housing opportunities for brown people

• Frustration with the perpetuation of apartheid style spatial planning

• The total lack of housing opportunities close to work

Spokesperson for Gatvol Capetonians, Fadiel Adams said on Cape Talk on Wednesday that the protest was against the legacy of apartheid-era spatial planning.

“We are shutting down in defiance of the marginalisation of the people of the Cape Flats because of apartheid spatial planning that forces us to live in backyards and overcrowded rentals and council housing.”

The movement, which sprung up last year, has been labelled as “racist” and “anti-black” for its rhetoric towards black South Africans and foreigners. In 2018 they were quoted as saying that black people from the Eastern Cape should move out of the Cape Flats and be “bussed back” to the Eastern Cape.

Some of Thursday’s protesters who said they were of Cape Malay descent made subtly racist comments, one remarking to this Daily Maverick reporter that she was one of the “better” black people they had interacted with.

Protesters blocked off major arterial roads all around the City including: the R300, Symphony road, Wale and Strand Street, Military Road, Vanguard Drive, Voortrekker road, the N1, Spine road, Highlands, Eisleben, the M5, Hyde Road, Prince George, Kommetjie and Soetwater.

The majority of protests were peaceful but tyres were burnt on Prince George drive in Parkwood and teargas and stun grenades were used to disperse a crowd along Voortrekker road in Kensington.

A memorandum was due to be handed over to the City of Cape Town at the Civic Centre at 2pm. DM