On Thursday 16 February the DA government listened to the Chapmans Peak protesters and negotiated with them because 2 protesters handcuffed themselves to the scaffolding
of the tolling building project.
The Western Cape DA government is now said to be negotiating alternatives to the Chapmans Peak tolling building being built there, after MEC Robin Carlisle so kragdadigly proclaimed that there was no turning back on the R54 million development.
A few weeks before a few hundred protesters from the Cape Flats moved in to occupy the Rondebosch Common because the Mayor of Cape Town Patricia De Lille, and the Western Cape DA government couldn't see their way clear to even listen to the many social grievances of the Cape Flats protesters.
In the process the Rondebosch Common protesters were met with obstruction, police action and 42 of them were arrested.
On Thursday morning a caller from Somerset West called in to Cape Talk 567, and in comparing the 2 actions by protesters, called it "Double standards of the worst kind by the DA municipality and Western Cape government".
The caller mentioned that the only reason the DA acted against the one group of protesters and not against the other,
is that the one group didn't match the profile of DA supporters.
I fully agree with his assessment.
And this is where our role as citizens, ratepayers, taxpayers, and members of organisations comes in.
We must never allow ourselves to be intimidated and marginilised by people who are elected to serve our needs and our interests.
At issue here is not the protest action of the 2 groups.
The issue here is all about the double standards applied by the DA in addressing the grievances of 2 groups of protesters.
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