/ 21 June 2013

Let cash-flush Fifa cough up

Let Cash Flush Fifa Cough Up

 ("Potty training in the Western Cape", June 14).

A drainage system is being installed in Lotus River informal settlement at present. How long will it take? Will Andile Lili and Loyiso Nkohla continue to throw human excreta for as long as it takes to build the drainage system? Cannot interim measures be installed in the meantime? There are bucket systems all over the country. Why protest only in the Western Cape?

For three years the ANC Youth League has vowed to make the Western Cape ungovernable. It is useless to deny this. Suddenly Lili and Nkohla are purists, campaigning for human rights only. Pull the other one!

Why was R4-billion spent on a football stadium that is now something of a white elephant? Fifa demanded the stadiums – can they now fork out for the flush toilets?

We remember clearly the pressure that was applied to the Cape Town city council by government to build the expensive stadium. In fact, why spend R60-billion on football stadiums all over the country, when the country's sanitation system is in such a shocking state? Football is not a human right, is it?

It reveals the scant attention paid by the ruling elite to human rights when repeatedly they spend vast sums on unnecessary items, purely for the benefit of the ruling elite.  

We are a "new" democracy. We cannot afford such luxuries. We need schools and training colleges, hospitals and a working sanitation system to ensure the health of the working class (the other classes can, and do, take care of themselves). The government, not Helen Zille, needs to be pulled up short: it has its priorities all wrong.

Lili and Nkohla could spend their time in much more positive ways, perhaps by making themselves available to the city council to help clean up toilets in the townships?

Growing up on the Cape Flats with the bucket system did not prevent me from getting to university. Get real! – Irma Liberty, Rondebosch