EFF Johannesburg disappointed with Mashaba’s citizen’s arrest, Mashaba apologises

The EFF in Johannesburg is disappointed with mayor Herman Mashaba’s attitude towards small entrepreneurs doing business in the city and strongly condemned the alleged continued arrest of informal traders.

In a statement, the EFF stated that on the 12 November, the mayor posted a tweet where he claimed to have performed his first citizen’s arrest on an informal trader who was transiting goods to his processing site.

“In the caption [of his tweet], the Mayor questions the trader’s transitioning mode and cast aspersions on the trader as a potential carrier of deadly diseases,” the statment read. “In his follow up tweets, he quite astonishingly and in a very absurd logic connects this trade to an ebola outbreak in West Africa.”

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The statement continues, “First and foremost and before stating our case on the formalisation of this ‘second economy’, the EFF would like to condemn the mayor’s uninformed and strange views on the causal link between African trade and disease mutation. We furthermore suspect that this medically illiterate posture is not of his making… We are saying this because it is inconceivable for a former informal trader [Mashaba] who has on numerous occasions shared stories of being raised in harsh conditions by a domestic worker could grow to hold such views…”

The statement concluded that Mashaba should withdraw his grandstanding remarks and apologise to informal traders.

Mashaba has since apologised for his comments, however not for the arrest:

I apologise most sincerely to our residents for my comments relating to the meat also presenting a potential risk of an ebola outbreak. pic.twitter.com/1vYIvOdKq7

— Herman Mashaba (@HermanMashaba) November 14, 2018