Protests in Soweto against poor service delivery should be a warning to the government that people were losing patience, the Independent Democrats (ID) said on Tuesday.
Party leader Patricia de Lille said in a statement that while people understood the history and the backlog of service delivery, they were no longer willing to accept that there was not enough money to deliver.
”The government must surely understand that the people have waited long enough for delivery on promises that have amounted to nothing,” she said.
De Lille said she was shocked ”at the violent police action against those who demand their constitutional rights”.
”I am shocked when I see innocent Soweto residents tear-gassed and shot … I can understand the frustration and anger of our people”.
She said the government should be ashamed that the very masses that fought for freedom were now being tear-gassed and shot at with rubber bullets.
”I fought hard with our brothers and sisters for freedom of speech, freedom of expression and the right to protest.
”I now realise that the struggle is not yet over”.
She said after 13 years of democracy there was an urgent need to protect the gains of the struggle and provide South Africans with a new and positive vision.
The Democratic Alliance spokesperson on local government in Gauteng, Paul Willemburg, said the government promised those that voted for them that they would be getting a better local government in 2006.
”If residents are angry enough to risk physical injury it means that these promises have been broken,” he said.
”We have been warning [for] sometime now that if the ANC [African National Congress] was brazen enough to ignore the official opposition, then they would be brazen enough to ignore residents.”
Residents in Kliptown, Soweto, protested on Monday, demanding houses, sanitation and electricity. — Sapa