This open letter serves as notice to highlight our
frustrations, dismay and ultimately disappointment to the Silvertown community.
So from our dusty roads to yours.
How is it possible to use the Chatsworth community as
leverage by keeping us hostage in order to advance your struggles for basic
services. Yes we do agree its inhumane to live without proper water and
sanitation facilities. Electricity is something else. Some of us waited for
years to get electricity even though we pay rates and taxes but you cannot
continue to gamble with our livelihoods and our safety and treat us like
objects.
This is not the first time it happened. Whenever you as a community
have an issue of any kind you feel you have the right or are entitled to
prevent us from leaving our area. Whether it’s to go to work, go to hospital,
get to school or just conducting business, it’s not on. To make matters worse
you take it a step further and stone the bus transporting people home from
work, our main means of transport where innocent residents gets injured, damage
the bus in the process forgetting that’s the same bus you as the Silverton
residents share with us the very next morning to get to work and other
purposes.
Ridiculous, isn’t it? You know very well that’s a common struggle for
both communities (Chatsworth and Silvertown) that’s been coming on for years
but you feel it’s your right to damage and destroy what we fought for before
you came to illegally settle here.
The issue with regards to basic services is to be taken up
with the Swartland Municipality, not the residents of Chatsworth. That’s
coward. The most effective way of protesting is not to scream and shout from
your backyard but to mobilize your community in a disciplined manner to go and
protest in front of the building or institution that you want to get your
message to. So we suggesting that in future you go to the N7, Swartland
Municipality, Eskom and disrupt the entire Malmesbury CBD to drive your message
across. Show us some respect and maybe we can work together for a more
efficient and inexpensive transport at the Atlantis bus depot.
The harsh reality is that we all face hardship and
difficulties during this lockdown period but don’t ruin the opportunity we have
to earn some money in order to feed and provide for our families.
Furthermore, a very disturbing and concerning thing is that
you spread false information on your Facebook page about us. The honorable
thing to do is to correct it with the cold hard facts. These are the facts: we
have never prevented you in any way from getting much needed basic services or
electricity or threaten your safety. We didn’t protest with you on the day the
police opened fire on you as you claim in your Facebook post because you
fighting against us – the community that could and should stand alongside you, with you, for common and shared issues like better transport, safety in our
area, decent shops, banks, a petrol station and the lack of a secondary school
and soon a police station, if we cannot work together as neighbours.
