/ 26 August 2012

ANCYL march: Police are ready, warns Zille

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille.
Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille.

Zille told the Sunday Times she would only accept the league's memorandum in person if it withdrew "their threats to make the city ungovernable".

The chairperson of the league's Dullah Omar region, Khaya Yozi, said the march was to ensure that "white beneficiaries" of economic production would "feel the pinch" but added that the aim was not to incite violence, but to draw attention to service delivery gripes, he said.

In a statement, Zille said the police have assured the provincial government that they were ready to prevent a repeat of the violent protests that have marked the "ungovernability campaign", resulting in the deaths of four people, numerous injuries and destruction of public property worth millions.

She said many people do have genuine grievances about their living conditions, but Yozi was not one of them, as he was living in an RDP house.

"The ANC Youth League protests fall into a different category. The league is not interested in discussing service delivery problems, as they demonstrated in Khayelitsha recently when young men wearing ANC berets violently broke up a report-back meeting convened by mayor [Patricia] de Lille." – Sapa