The city has launched an investigation and urged persons who may have felt threatened or intimated by the security guards to call its emergency hotline or report to the police. (Image via ppa247.co.za)
Authorities in Cape Town have criticised a private security company that allegedly ordered black beach-goers to leave Clifton beach over the Christmas holiday.
Mayor of Cape Town Dan Plato and a senior municipal official dismissed claims by the Professional Protection Alternatives (PPA) security firm that it was working for the city authorities when patrolling the beach.
Beaches, like many public areas, were segregated during apartheid and have since been a flash-point of racial tension.
Beach-goers were told to leave Clifton beach by PPA guards last Sunday, two days before Christmas.
“The city has at no stage given any authority to PPA to enforce by-laws,” Cape Town’s director for safety and security Richard Bosman said in a statement on Thursday. “The city has acted swiftly to address the conduct of PPA staff.”
On Friday, Plato reiterated that the security company “had no authority to ask anyone to leave Clifton beach”, but added that “they asked people of all races to leave, and did not single out any race groups”.
But activist Chumani Maxwele alleged that the guards had targeted black people on the beach, which attracts huge crowds over the holiday season.
“These private security guards are hired by the Clifton (residents), they are actually briefed to not allow black people who appear to look like they are from the townships or criminals onto the beach,” he told News24.
‘Barbaric and racist’
National government has weighed-in in the row, with Environmental Affairs Minister, Nomvula Mokonyane saying on Friday that the “alleged interference and racial profiling of beachgoers by private security firms” is “unconstitutional and illegal”.
“South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and no spaces are for the exclusive use of any citizens based on their race, gender or creed,” said Mokonyane in a statement.
Phillemon Mapulane, the head of the parliamentary committee on environmental affairs, condemned the ejection of beach-goers as “barbaric and racist”.
PPA chief executive Alwyn Landman said that the company’s guards did not close the beach, but acted to protect local residents after alleged criminal activity caused “mayhem”.
The city has launched an investigation and urged persons who may have felt threatened or intimated by the security guards to call its emergency hotline or report to the police.
Early Friday evening some protesters started gathering at the beach for a vigil.
In 2016, estate agent Penny Sparrow likened black beach-goers to monkeys in a social media post, triggering widespread outrage. She was fined R150 000.
In September, former restaurateur Adam Catzavelos ignited another storm of protest after he used a racial slur in a phone video message from Greece, boasting that the beach had no black people on it.
© Agence France-Presse