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City to fight court order
10/06/2008 15:28 - (SA)
Cape Town - The City of Cape Town says it will fight a High Court order that it open up community halls to foreigners displaced by last month's xenophobic violence.
It says it wants the Western Cape provincial administration to first use facilities under its own control, and that community halls are not the best way to accommodate the refugees.
Acting judge Pakama Ngewu issued the interim order on Monday night, following an urgent application by Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool.
Ngewu also interdicted the city's Metro Police from preventing displaced foreigners from leaving the Soetwater camp or any other camp they were currently living in.
Following last month's xenophobic attacks, the city opened a number of community halls to displaced foreign nationals.
However it also moved thousands of them into six camps, the largest at Soetwater, a beach resort on the Atlantic coast.
Mayoral spokesperson Robert Macdonald said on Tuesday that the city would oppose the order.
'People are free to move'
He also rejected the suggestion that the Metro Police were stopping people from leaving the camps.
"Displaced people are free to move in and out at all times," he said. "Under no circumstances have we ever tried to control their movements."
He said 15 of the 18 community halls listed in the court order were in fact already open to and housing refugees, and had been open since the day the violence began.
Rasool's application came after a bid by the province earlier on Monday night to relocate some of the foreigners at Soetwater who reportedly feared for their safety after acts of violence by their fellows.
A busload of Soetwater refugees was turned away by city officials from a community hall in the Samora Machel informal settlement late Monday night.
The group was eventually given shelter at a youth centre in Tokai.
- SAPA
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