Cape Town - After numerous complaints by the cemetery board on the deteriorating state of the Johnston Road cemetery because of vagrants sleeping there, the SA Human Rights Commissioner Chris Nissen has vowed to personally ask vagrants next to the cemetery to clear out and respect the dead.
Nissen said the City must not be selective about who they can and can’t evict.
“The Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) condemns any person who goes into sacred places and vandalises it. The dead too have rights, and they are supposed to be resting in peace. I will personally go and ask the vagrants to vacate the cemetery and tell them to respect the deceased,” he said.
Rylands Gatesville Civic Association executive member Salima Modack said the City should not hide behind the SAHRC to let vagrants vandalise property and commit theft.
She said this had been a “game deflection” and “ping-pong” with the City since 2017.
City’s law enforcement spokesperson Wayne Dyason said the onus remained on the management board of the privately-owned cemeteries to maintain and secure their properties.
He said the City was doing what it can to assist in terms of social development interventions and law enforcement patrols.
Dyason also said the surrounding location was attended to by law enforcement officers on a regular basis.
“Offers of assistance have been rejected and this is further exacerbated by the City’s limited ability to enforce its by-laws relating to public spaces due to the current pending litigation involving the Human Rights Commission, resulting in persons erecting permanent structures and encouraging them to remain on the streets,” he said.
Mayor Dan Plato said while it was ironic that Nissen now seemed to carry out the duties he was trying to prevent the City from doing, he welcomed his intention to assist in Rylands.
“There are also attempts to undermine the City’s efforts to protect land in the courts, notably by litigation from Mr Chris Nissen and the SAHRC are pursuing which specifically asks the courts to declare unlawful the right to protect property against illegal occupation in real-time – known as counter-spoliation,” he said
Plato said the City was awaiting an appeal date in the Supreme Court of Appeal after an interdict was obtained by SAHRC which hampered the City’s efforts to protect land in some instances.