Johannesburg - The community of Westbury has taken the amendments to the Employment Equity Act into their own hands after they marched to several government departments and privately owned businesses in the area.
Their demands for inclusion in employment and business opportunities in the area come amid yet another shooting that resulted in the death of a 12-year-old girl at the weekend.
Police spokesperson Colonel Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi said officers found the girl lying in a pool of blood in the street on Friday. She was taken to the nearest hospital, but was declared dead on arrival.
Yesterday, residents barricaded parts of Perth Road in Westbury and Westdene, blocking traffic between Fourth Avenue and Harmony Street, as they marched to government departments, including Helen Joseph Hospital, Rahima Moosa Hospital, Social Development’s Westbury Transformation Development Centre, South Bekels, JMPD offices, Shoprite, and Sophiatown police station.
The community was led by Bishop Dulton Adams, councillor Ronald Harris and various community groups as they delivered their memorandum of demands to each of these institutions.
Bishop Dulton called on Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi, represented by Kenneth Barnes, to respond with a commitment to include members of the community in the various projects that he has been spearheading over the past few weeks, including crime prevention and other youth programmes in the province.
“In 14 days, we will be back here to meet the premier. He must come and give us answers. The purpose of this memorandum is to express our deepest concern, anger, and frustration with the direction that the government is steering in our communities.
“We are demanding a straight and forthright answer from the premier. He must tell us directly that he is out to exterminate people who have been classified as coloured.
“We request a plan of action from his office on what his administration is going to do to restore the confidence we once proudly held as a government that treats us equitably and justly, as promised in the Constitution }
“There has been consistent unfair treatment meted out by successive governments. First by the apartheid government, and now by our own brothers and sisters,” the bishop lamented.
Maureen Pieterse, a mother to a 24-year-old JMPD learnership holder, decried how her son has been forced to stay home after they were removed midway through the programme.
“Our children are forced to stay at home after they were removed from a JMPD learnership without any explanation,” she said.
Speaking outside the JMPD offices, safety and security MMC Dr Mgcini Tshwaku promised he would intervene in the exclusionary policies that discriminate against coloured communities in the department.
“In 14 days, we are going to respond to this memorandum line by line. We are dealing with this issue of EE, which suggests the department is saturated with coloureds. There is a problem here … It means when there are positions, we must open them up to our coloured communities, because we are together in the struggle.”
The Star