STATEMENT BY PATRICIA DE LILLE, FORMER EXECUTIVE MAYOR OF CAPE TOWN, LEADER OF THE GOOD MOVEMENT

At the height of the country’s holiday season when families are enjoying time together and enjoying our beautiful natural amenities, like beaches, it is shocking to learn that a private security company has been permitted to police our magnificent Camps Bay and Clifton Beaches.

Public amenities have no closing times. We have long passed the days of curfews and restricted movement. There is no lawful or rational basis for this security company to “shutdown” our beaches at 8pm or at all. 

This conduct tramples on our hard-won constitutional rights and anyone who was forced to leave the beach should lay criminal charges with the police.

I’m appalled by the lack of leadership and accountability from Cape Town’s political leadership. They are absent.

The reports we are receiving suggest that PPA, the security company, was conducting law enforcement with the tacit approval of the City’s Metro Police. 

Policing may not be outsourced to private security companies.

Executive Mayor Dan Plato needs to explain to South Africans how a public beach came to be shutdown and allegedly in collusion with the City’s Law Enforcement management. 

It is incidents like these that break down our efforts at nation building and set us back in the work of healing a wounded society. 

GOOD will call out those who claim privileges they are not entitled to. 

GOOD calls on all the good people of South Africa to unite behind our call for social and spatial justice in our land. 

We cannot build a prosperous country when we allow some to divide us or leave anyone behind. 

The City’s leadership needs to account for what happened and if PPA were acting without a explicit or tacit arrangement with Law Enforcement then criminal charges need to be laid against them. If they were acting in terms of some arrangement then heads should roll.

Statement issued by Patricia de Lille, Leader of Good Movement, 28 December 2018