Leaders of various organisations, including members of the community, took it upon themselves on Sunday morning to clean their town, which was messed up by a group of hooligans protesting labour issues against Inkosi Langalibalele Local Municipality in Estcourt town.
This patriotic clean-up campaign was an initiative of concerned members’ of South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO), African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) and African National Congress (ANC) whose members realised that it was discomforting that the town, under their leadership, looked like a complete dumpsite.
The concerned members thought of residents of the town and realised it was unacceptable to compliment hooliganism by watching them destroy our heritage. Addressing the volunteers, the Mayor Jabu Mbhele, appreciated the initiative and encouraged volunteers to keep up the good work of taking care of the people of our municipality.
Furthermore, she urged all members’ concerned to refrain from responding to the high-level of stupidity, which is trending on social media and elsewhere, as conducted by well-known hooligans of our town. Leaders of the concerned organisations made a collective call of encouraging peace and stability, in spite of what has taken place and what we further anticipate in the week ahead.
Moreover, leadership of the municipality is encouraged to provide decisive leadership on employees who formed part of the illegal protest, whilst they were supposed to be at work. In the same vein, leaders condemn this act with high contempt and encourage those who genuinely wish to raise issues to do so lawfully and through internal processes provided.
We discourage the level of seeking popularity by using a foolish stance, which at the end might impact negatively individually. Due processes must be observed and respected. Members of society expressed high levels of gratitude when sighting members of the organisations leading by example. Indeed, they experienced that these organisations care for them.
We also appreciate support from volunteers in ensuring that the hygienic goal is alive. We thank all our volunteers young, women, old, disabled and professionals who took part in this patriotic campaign. We encourage them to keep up the good work; our town is our collective responsibility.
Finally we wish to extend our invitation for future purposes to all residents of the town should such hooliganism manifest all of us shall gather to fight it head on. United we stand, divided we fall.
Veronica Penniston and Mthobisi Xulu
SANCO Inkosi Langalibalele Sub-region: Secretariat
