After the peaceful march made to Mayor Naga Patrick Lipudi’s offices at Town Hall on Friday, 25 January, residents of Musieville and the Moshongoville suburb banded together to block off registration stations in the area.
Certain community leaders and members would not allow residents to register for the upcoming national elections before their demands of Friday were met.
To recap what occurred on Friday, more than two thousand Moshongoville residents marched down to Town Hall to hand in a memorandum to the mayor, demanding improvements to the settlement’s infrastructure, including but not limited to water and electricity.
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Although this march was very peaceful, the same could not be said for the registration boycott on Saturday and Sunday.
ANC members clashed with the community members involved in the blockage in an effort to allow their party members to get registered.
One of the Moshogoville community leaders, Steward Gaonakala, reported that the ANC threatened their people, brandishing firearms. Police were later forced to intervene. Steward also said that, on Sunday, the voting stations were opened again at the Munsieville Primary School where they were stationed, but that they were not allowing the public to go inside.
It was reported that some community members wanted to march up to a local councillor’s home, but were deterred by other members. “That is when they went to shut down other IEC registration centres in other wards,” Steward said.
At some point during the protests, car tyres were also set on fire and left in the roads.
Moshongoville leaders made it clear that they will not be involved in any attempts to shut down large parts of Krugersdorp on Monday, 28 January, as a recent popular text and Facebook message has implied. It is as yet unclear whether such an action will take place as no authoritative source could confirm it. For now it seems that this is simply a fake message being passed around.
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