Kaunda visits Montclair following civil unrest

EIGHTEEN trucks were burned in Mooi River in one day.

The revelation was made by the city’s mayor, councillor Mxolisi Kaunda, who was informed by the MEC for Transport Community Safety and Liaison, Peggy Nkonyeni.

The mayor visited Montclair on Friday afternoon, July 16, to address the community’s concerns following civil unrest last week. He was accompanied by members of the city’s executive council’s speaker, Weziwe Thusi and the chief whip, Sibongiseni Mkhize.

In his address, the mayor informed residents of the cause of the unrest which disrupted various activities in the city including the looting of businesses.

He said most looters were responding to the call to have former president, Jacob Zuma released.

“The former president had to appear before the Zondo Commission of Inquiry. He was meant to return back to testify, but he decided to put his own reasons which he believed were valid. He thought he would not get a just judgment because of the nature of the relationship he had with the Deputy Chief Justice, Raymond Zondo,” he said, advising residents that it was not for them to judge whether these actions were right or wrong.

Kaunda’s Montclair visit coincided with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s oversight visit conducted in the province. He undertook a visit around eThekwini Metro to assess the impact of recent public violence and the deployment of security forces.

The President interacted with the provincial government and security forces. Ramaphosa was accompanied by the Premier Sihle Zikalala, Police Minister Bheki Cele and the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.

“I’m pleased that our provincial officials, particularly the premier, MECs and other leaders were the first on the ground to assess the situation and tried to deal with it. With that, our police officials as well as our soldiers were also on the ground to deal with a very difficult situation. We then deployed another key layer which was our ministers – of police, defence, and of state security, who came with other leaders of the cabinet. I’ve been in daily and hourly contact with the premier, ministers as well as commanders, who have been conducting all the activities.

“We obviously, as the government, are extremely concerned about what happened and we are doing everything to deal with it. It is quite clear that all these incidents of unrest and looting were instigated,” Ramaphosa told the media at his oversight visit.

Kaunda said people have expressed their beliefs that there has been an injustice meted against the former president. He said marchers had the right to voice out their opinions as stated in the constitution which gives citizens the freedom of speech.

“Then what transpired was the call for Zuma’s release. That call was joined by many other interest groups and those groups were criminals themselves. People knew in the public for dealing in carjackings and murderers.”

“They did not join because they were supporting the motive for the call, but because they wanted their narrow interests to emerge but within the call, as if they were calling for the release of Zuma.”

“The other majority who joined in on the call were just poor people who are unemployed. All these interest groups converged and superseded the initial call and it became something else.”

“No longer the call for the release of Zuma. That is why we experienced looting, burning of shops, the killings of innocent people are because the emergence in the conversion of all these interests superseded the initial motive,” he said.

Onward, he called for leadership to ascertain programmes in place to be responsive to the plight of the poor. “We need to reconcile. We have a lot of lives that should not have been lost,” he added.

Ward 64 councillor, Gavin Hegter, said the unfortunate incidents that followed the unrest in his ward will mar the area with negative connotations.

“What hurts me most is how we’ll be labelled as a racist community because of a very unfortunate incident that should never have happened. It was not racially motivated, I can guarantee that. When the looting started in our ward, it caught us off guard.”

“Nobody expected it. There was a group that came running down the road with a set of tyres from the Montclair Sports Grounds and they set them alight and from there it escalated.”

“Montclair does not have an active sector policing, unfortunately, it took longer to get things going and by then everything had been destroyed. Yellowwood Park has an active sector policing with members who communicated and set up roadblocks to protect our local supermarket.”

“It was the only food source, other than the new supermarket on Aleno Road that managed to survive, which I believe was because it is new, nobody knew it was there. And the idea was to protect our food source for all of us,” he said.