Sprayed blue by police - but charges dropped

Cape Town community leader Mario Wanza has a dream.

He dreams of an integrated city in which "rich and poor live together".

"Houses should be built on the [Rondebosch] common and the golf course. Apartheid is still alive and well here," he said yesterday outside Athlone Magistrate's Court, where he appeared in connection with an illegal gathering at Rondebosch Common, a heritage site.

Wanza was granted bail of R500 yesterday and will appear in court again next month.

People from several civic organisations from Stellenbosch and Kraaifontein gathered on the land on Friday for a three-day "jobs, l and and housing" meeting. But they were dispersed by the police, who sprayed them with blue dye.

A group of 40 people appeared in the Wynberg Magistrate's Court yesterday for participating in the illegal gathering but charges against them were dropped.

A defiant Wanza said: "Our activity was not illegal. We applied, we tried to meet city [officials], but they ducked and dived.

"It is clear they were protecting the rich and not wanting the poor to set foot on the [Rondebosch] common. If our activities were not legal, why were the charges dropped?"

The meeting raised the ire of Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille. In her weekly newsletter on Friday she called Wanza a "would-be but failed public servant".

She criticised Wanza and his "allies", including ANC councillor Tony Ehrenreich, for intending to "illegally occupy a piece of land as part of an agenda peppered with racially divisive rhetoric".

"This is a peaceful and diverse community known mostly for its schools and retirees. There is only one agenda at work here and it is not one to address issues of the past and how to build a better future. It is to catapult the tensions of the past into the present to ensure we never move into the future," said De Lille.

But Wanza hit back. "De Lille is a career politician who doesn't care about people. She sold out the PAC, she sold out the ID and will sell out the DA."

Rondebosch Common is, as described by the city, a valuable piece of land "in a built-up area surrounded by established homes, schools and hospitals".

It is used for "spring flower spotting" and walking the dogs.

Pastor Xola Skosana, of Khayelitsha, was at the gathering on Friday. "I have escaped imprisonment by the skin of my teeth, saved by the clerical shirt and the religious look, I guess.

"They sprayed some blue substance on our clothes. I'm tempted to say that's DA blood. Most of our people were manhandled and thrown into police vans. I have never seen so many police," said Skosana.

"Now I know you don't mess with stolen white property, DA and ANC police will crush you! Watch the news, the writing is on the wall.

"I salute the mothers and young girls from Mitchells Plain who looked at the men in blue and dared them to arrest them. Everything was blue, it's truly DA land."