Their “say it like it is” videos have gone viral and they have garnered thousands of followers on social media. From gangsterism to crime, from poverty to unemployment, Gatvol Capetonian has plenty to say. But the registered non-profit organisation, which describes itself as a pressure group, has also come under fire for being racist and divisive. News24’s Tammy Petersen sat down with its representatives to get to the heart of what this self-styled “community pit bull” is all about.

A controversial movement that is garnering support on the Cape Flats and advocating for people to be “bused back to the Eastern Cape” is not “anti-black”, but “pro-brown”, its organisers say.

Gatvol Capetonian started in the lounge of chairperson Ebrahiem Davids’ Portlands, Mitchells Plain, home in April. It is now a registered non-profit organisation, but describes itself as a pressure group.

“We are a community pit bull,” media liaison Oscar Lyons says.

“Our sole purpose is to hold politicians accountable to their communities and the constituents they are supposed to serve.”

The group appears to have become an online hit.

In two months, it has amassed 18 000 Facebook followers with the majority of their social media followers commenting in support of its message.

It has even gained the support of Steve Hofmeyr.

But others have called the movement racist and divisive.

“The issues it claims are impacting on mixed race people impact on all people of colour who are marginalised economically,” one user pointed out.

“Instead of fighting against black people and calling for secession from South Africa, it would be helpful if the group recognised the common challenges and found solutions.”

I’m not Capetonian nor coloured, but I stand with the Gatvol Capetonians. Go #Capexit

— Steve Hofmeyr (@steve_hofmeyr) June 13, 2018

Another accused Gatvol Capetonian of “dividing our people”.

“We as coloured people should stop thinking we are an island on our own. We are part of South Africa; we must realise and accept we are black stop encouraging this name ‘coloured’ (sic).”

But the group’s spokesperson Fadiel Adams insists there is “not a racist bone” in their movement.

“Take a walk around Cape Town. Show me the trace of us [coloured people]. We have always been here. You see Sobukwe, Mandela, Kgosana, everybody. Where is Ashley Kriel and Pedro Page Boulevard? Krotoa Airport? They act as if we have never been here. They want to black out all of Cape Town.”

He said it wasn’t about “us and them, per se”. Instead, Adams alleged government policies were threatening to “kill all of us”. He claimed that the government wanted to “force us to speak Xhosa, but they declare war on Afrikaans, our indigenous language”.

But that’s not all.

‘We lost a generation of youngsters’

Gatvol Capetonian says it wants to see an independent Western Cape – a country with its own flag, currency and laws.

“If you were not born [here], in our ‘country’, pre-1994, you need to pack your bags, sell off your assets and go home,” Adams said simply.

“Look at the farmland we have. We can produce our own food. We have the ocean to our back and can do all the fishing we need. We produce our own petrol, our own electricity. We’ve got the tourism industry – we could turn this into the monarchy in Africa.”

Money generated in the province can “instantly uplift the standard of living of every Capetonian”, he argues.

Adams argued that since democracy, Cape Flats communities continued to grow “exponentially poorer”.

“We lost a generation of youngsters to unemployment, gangsterism, drugs… We want it to stop. We are asking for fairness.

“Look at the employment line. See how many coloured people are employed here. Our kids are sitting on the corners with matric certificates, and other people [specifically from the Eastern Cape] are just coming in here and taking, grabbing. What are they saying to us?”

Despite their target being coloured people living on the Cape Flats, the movement welcomes people of all races, Lyons said.

“If you are gatvol, you can join us.”

‘I had a picture of Mandela on my door’

Adams has been especially vocal on social media, with videos in which he shares his views going viral on Facebook.

“I say it like it is,” he shrugs. “I don’t think I am popular. I think our people agree for the most part with what I say. It could have been any one of us saying it and the effect would have been the same.

“If anybody thinks that I am a racist: I had a picture of Mandela on the back of my door when I was growing up. I supported the UDF. I got moered by the boere in apartheid, man, for rioting at the corner of Concert Boulevard and Prince George Drive. I burned those robots. I helped to overturn a Casspir. We as children fought for this country, man.

“This is not what we were promised. That this government is happy with the genocide of our laaities out there and expect us to sit still for it? Yoh, they have another thing coming. If you don’t know what the issues are on the Cape Flats, keep your bek (shut up).”

One of Gatvol Capetonian’s newest members, Moulana Junaid Mcleod, believes that the movement “says what needs to be said”.

“I see Gatvol as that organisation that will take coloured people from where they are now – in a situation where they are oppressed, marginalised, excluded – to something better.

‘The only good politician is a dead politician’

“If this message can be carried throughout the Western Cape, then there is hope for the coloured community, for every oppressed section or sector in Cape Town.”

The name Gatvol Capetonian started as a joke after Lyons said he was a “gatvol coloured”.

“I told him, my broer (brother), think a little bigger. Gatvol Capetonian,” Adams recalled.

Lyons had three T-shirts made, with the name emblazoned on the front.

The back reads: “The only good politician is a dead politician.”

“It’s the Cape Flats that keep politicians in power,” Adams pointed out. “The DA needs to know when it loses the Western Cape, it’s done. It’s finished. It can deregister and move on. The ANC and DA look exactly the same. They play the blame game, but they are both out to f*ck us.”

Making waves and lighting fires

In a perfect world, there would be no need for an organisation like theirs, Adams said.

“But there is, and that need is not going to go away. Look at Cape Town. Fifty percent of the voting base comes from here, from us. It used to be more, but look at the influx [of black people]. If you look at the numbers in Parliament, you have whites and blacks talking about us. We don’t have a voice. This organisation exists solely so that we can have a voice.”

Lyons said they have been contacted by “gatvol” people from across the country who want to open chapters of their own.

He joked people may soon see “Gatvol New Yorker” if the trend continued.

“If we were just a nothing and a nobody, a bunch of coloured guys talking crap, why would the DA be contacting us? Why would a DA activist from Gauteng message a bunch of Cape Flats coloured guys that have got no bearing on your life wanting to know about our political plans for 2019? It’s because we make waves. Not just in Mitchells Plain, but as far as Limpopo.

“They can come out and they can put out fires, and we will light new ones.”

Meanwhile, Forum of Cape Flats Civics chairperson has also hit out at the group, calling it “regressive and backward”.

Its chairperson Lester September said, “We should look rather to what unites us … and not unproven race classification.”

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LONDON – Britain on Tuesday unveiled its “action plan” to tackle discrimination against the gay community, which includes bringing forward legislation to ban the practice of conversion therapy.

The plan was drawn up using data from an online survey that received 108,000 responses, making it the largest ever national survey of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people anywhere in the world.

Around two percent of respondents said they had received some form of conversion therapy, while another five percent had had it offered to them but refused.

LGBT rights group Stonewall defines conversion therapy as “any form of treatment or psychotherapy which aims to reduce or stop same-sex attraction,” although the survey did not provide a definition.

“These activities are wrong, and we are not willing to let them continue,” said the government plan. 

“We will fully consider all legislative and non-legislative options to prohibit promoting, offering or conducting conversion therapy.”

Just over a half of those receiving conversion therapy said it was conducted by a faith group, 19 percent by a healthcare professional and 16 percent by a parent or family member.

“We are not trying to prevent LGBT people from seeking legitimate medical support or spiritual support from their faith leader in the exploration of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” added the report.

Lasting change

More than two-thirds of LGBT respondents said they had avoided holding hands with a same-sex partner for fear of a negative reaction.

“I was struck by just how many respondents said they cannot be open about their sexual orientation or avoid holding hands with their partner in public for fear of a negative reaction,” said Prime Minister Theresa May. 

“No one should ever have to hide who they are or who they love.

“This LGBT action plan will set out concrete steps to deliver real and lasting change across society,” she added.

Some 40 percent of respondents had experienced incidents such as verbal harassment or physical violence in the 12 months preceding the survey, but more than 90 percent of them went unreported, with respondents explaining “it happens all the time”.

The government plan includes appointing a national LGBT health adviser, extending an anti-homophobic bullying programme in schools and improving the recording and reporting of LGBT hate crimes.

It also establishes a £4.5 million (R81.66 million) “LGBT Implementation Fund” to help deliver the plan.

Of the respondents, 61 percent identified as gay or lesbian and a quarter identified as bisexual. Four percent identified as pansexual.

Younger respondents identified in larger numbers as bisexual, asexual, pansexual, queer or ‘other’, and 13 percent of the respondents were transgender, with seven percent identifying as “non-binary” — having a gender that was neither exclusively that of a man nor a woman.

AFP

It is a myth that there are no investment opportunities on state-owned farms, and Pat Mathosa is living proof.

“Remove money as a means to access land,” Mathosa told the Constitutional Review Committee at its hearing on the amendment of Section 25 of the Constitution in Botshabelo in the Free State on Monday.

He said he knew it was a myth that there won’t be investment on state-owned land, as he has been farming successfully near Koffiefontuin on state-owned land.

“Don’t buy the land,” he told the committee.

Speaking on the sidelines of the hearing, Mathosa told News24 that, in the seven years he has been farming there, not once did the state pay him a visit.

“I’m a living example that it is not true [that] if the state owns the land, there is no investment,” he said.

READ: ANC to balance white fear, black anger in land debate – Mkhize

Opponents to the amendment of the Constitution to allow expropriation without compensation will often say, if this happens, investment will dry up.

“It’s an ideological point. It’s a mad ideological point,” Mathosa said.

“Ownership has nothing to do with production capacity.”

He said he has been farming on “desert land” near Koffiefontuin.

“The state is not a farmer.”

“I have a right to exploit the land.”

‘Not judged by the colour of their skin’

He said his right to farm on the particular piece of land was transferable to his wife or children if he died.

And the benefit of the arrangement to the state is that he pays taxes, provides work for up to 20 people, and provides them with housing, water and electricity.

The majority of speakers at the hearing in Botshabelo, 50kms outside of Bloemfontein, supported the amendment of the Constitution to allow expropriation without compensation.

The general argument was that black people have been violently dispossessed of land by white people.

Some speakers said the state should be unapologetic about taking back stolen land without compensation. It is also viewed as a way to end poverty. In addition, several speakers said it was untrue that black farmers would not be able to farm productively.

A commercial farmer, Piet de Bruin, said he was tired of people saying that land should be taken away from white people. He then spoke Sesotho (which wasn’t translated) and his words elicited some applause from black people in the audience.

“South Africa should be a place where people are not judged by the colour of their skin,” he said.

The argument against the amendment of the Constitution focused on the importance of title deeds and the economic impact it would have and the threat to food security. One of the counter-proposals was that white farmers should rather be forced to be BEE compliant.  

‘If we don’t do it with God, there will be blood’

Earlier, committee co-chairperson Lewis Nzimande said black and white people were welcome at the hearing, after a man said that white people shouldn’t participate in the discussions on land.

In a hearing characterised by racial invective, there were also some peacemakers, Koos Molehe being one of them.

“Land to our people is the answer to the havoc caused by the prison called locations, Bantustans, townships,” he said.

“Yes, we are ready to take care of our environment, animals, the land and our neighbourhoods.”

“Let the land of God benefit all who live on it,” he said.

Outside the venue – the Samson Sefuthi Community Hall – he told News24: “This is a very sensitive thing, the land. If we don’t do it with God, there will be blood.”

READ: Land: The people speak – Black and white welcome at hearings, says Constitutional Review Committee

A young woman called for a stop to racial divisiveness and a man said there would not be a white genocide.

In a statement released after the meeting, Nzimande thanked the public for their orderly participation in the icy weather.  

“The public has been extremely patient and orderly. When the venue was full, they patiently queued outside until they could be accommodated inside to have a say, while the proceedings were audible outside in the cold for an opportunity to speak.

We heard divergent views on this matter, all of which we take very seriously,” he said.

“The great numbers we have seen at the hearings so far are an indication of the critical importance of land.”

On Tuesday, the delegation of the committee currently in the Free State is expected to have a hearing at the Ferdie Meyer Hall in Welkom.

The delegation in Mpumalanga is expected to have its hearing at the Msukaligwa Town Hall in Ermelo.

JOHANNESBURG – A three-year-old girl was killed and two adult women were injured when they were knocked down by a car alongside Nasrec Road in Riverlea, Johannesburg on Sunday afternoon, paramedics said.

Paramedics from ER24 and other services arrived on the scene soon after 4pm, where they found two women and the little girl lying on the side of the road, ER24 spokesman Werner Vermaak said.

“Bystanders explained that a vehicle collided with them. All three landed in a nearby storm water drain. The bystanders removed them and brought them back up to the road’s surface while waiting for emergency services.”

Upon assessment, paramedics found that the three-year-old girl sustained fatal injuries. Sadly, there was nothing that could be done for her and she was declared dead on the scene.

A woman, believed to be the child’s mother, was found with serious injuries. She was treated on the scene for possible head and chest injuries before being taken to a nearby hospital. Another woman, believed to the woman’s sister, sustained moderate injuries. She was also treated on the scene and was transported to a hospital. The driver of the car was not injured. Local authorities attended the scene and would investigate, Vermaak said

African News Agency