Steuart Wright in East London
THE East Griqualand town of Matatiele was under siege this week as local businessmen retaliated against a consumer boycott by blocking outside traders from selling to boycotters.
The businessmen, hard hit by a five-day consumer boycott which has cost the town more than R6-million, blocked three roads to the town on Wednesday morning in a bid to choke the supply of goods to boycotters in and around the town.
About 2 000 squatters who had illegally occupied council land called the boycott after they were forcibly evicted last week. The council saw the occupation as part of an Eastern Cape campaign to sieze the kwaZulu/Natal town and surrounding East Griqualand.
A local trader said the blockades to prevent outside traders from exploiting the consumer boycott were removed on Wednesday afternoon.
He believed the businessmen, who have formed an action committee, have made their point. “If people from the Eastern Cape can boycott and block roads and the police do nothing, we can do the same,” he said.
According to the trader, the protest by local businessmen was not without confrontation.
At one stage, “in the conspicuous absence of police”, about 500 outside traders who had bought goods in Matatiele to sell to boycotters across the Eastern Cape border threatened to overturn vehicles.
He said the blockading of roads was phase one of their protest and unless scheduled talks with ANC officials from kwaZulu/Natal and the Eastern Cape later in the week were fruitful, the town’s traders would embark on phase two — which at this stage, he said, remains a secret.
The ANC’s Jacob Zuma met party officials in the town on Tuesday and Wednesday but traders said the talks had failed to tackle the consumer boycott or the plight of the homeless squatters. The talks, the traders said, dealt only with the split in ANC ranks over which province should get East Griqualand.
While Matatiele mayor Libby Sorour condemned the blockades, he said that “as long as the Eastern Cape continues its boycott I will support any steps to end it”.
Sorour has repeatedly claimed that the invasion of council land, mainly by people from the Eastern Cape, was orchestrated by the Eastern Cape as part of its campaign to win East Griqualand.
The Bisho government — which sees the relative wealth of kwaZulu/Natal as a beacon of hope for the region’s economic ailment — has made no bones about its intention to have its border shifted into its neighbour’s territory to include East Griqualand.
Last year Eastern Cape Premier Raymond Mhlaba declared the kwaZulu/Natal town of Kokstad one of his regional capitals.
Mhlaba is due to meet his kwaZulu/ Natal counterpart, Frank Mdlalose, on Monday to discuss the territorial dispute which prompted President Nelson Mandela to appoint Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and retired ANC chairman Walter Sisulu to seek an amicable solution last year.
To date no concrete steps have been taken to resolve the two provinces’ differences and tensions are mounting in what is traditionally a peaceful corner of the violence- plagued kwaZulu/Natal province. — Ecna