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When the NGOs in Cape Town tried to get access to Strandfontein, they were barred from entry, and those that did make it in - like the SA Human Rights Commission and Doctors Without Borders were horrified by what they saw and recommended that the camp be closed down, writes Mark Rountree.
I don't know who has the right to speak on behalf of Cape Town's thousands of homeless people, but someone should.
Most will not have access to social media, much less email, to reply to the shameful statements spewed by Cape Town Councillor Badroodien in his recent puff piece.
Badroodien boasts that Cape Town leads the way on caring for the homeless.
Indeed, in his city where the cars of NGO workers assisting the homeless are petrol-bombed, they are the only metro making international headlines for fining the homeless.
If it is not obvious, being a global leader in intolerance of the poor and vulnerable is not something to be proud of.
He offers to set out some facts, but misses the basic starting point.
His colleague, JP Smith, told the Sunday Times there were enough homeless shelter beds for all the city's homes people.
The facts, if we stick to that theme, were reported by the Western Cape Provincial Department of Social Development and their numbers differ from Smith's assertion.
They confirm that, last year, as Smith and co. were fining the homeless in Cape Town, there were just 1 499 shelter spaces for the city's 4 000 homeless people.
Badroodien boasts about the excellent facilities at their internment camp in Strandfontein.
The facts are that there was no social distancing to protect people from the coronavirus.
Hundreds of people were crowded in to marquees together and at least one young woman was gang-raped at the camp. Eyewitnesses confirm that no one had mattresses to sleep on during those cold, wet nights.
I doubt he spent a night there to check out the conditions himself. Cruelly, the fining of the homeless continued even whilst they were locked up in the internment camp.
Homelessness cannot be solved perfectly or overnight, but there are better and worse ways to handle it.
During the lockdown, the cities of Durban and Johannesburg worked with NGOs to provide a network of decentralised shelters and support centres.
Cape Town opted for a reported R58 million central camp for thousands.
When the NGOs in Cape Town tried to get access to Strandfontein, they were barred from entry, and those that did make it in - like the SA Human Rights Commission and Doctors Without Borders were horrified by what they saw and recommended that the camp be closed down.
Shutting the facility down is not "lawfare" - it is just about doing what is decent and right.
Those wasted tens of millions should have been allocated to shelters so that more spaces and support could be provided for the longer term.
Badroodien ends by remembering the injustices that the National Party wrought on his family who were cruelly removed from the inner city and dumped on the outskirts.
He is blind to the fact that Mayor Plato and many of his colleagues were members of that National Party; and he is blindly defending their repeated unjust forced removals.
- Mark Rountree, National Policy Officer for GOOD
