Yeoville and Bellevue residents are rallying around community activist Maurice Smithers, who received a death threat.
|||Yeoville and Bellevue residents are rallying around community activist Maurice Smithers, who received a death threat at the weekend.
Smithers has been active in Yeoville for the past 14 years, mainly as a volunteer, attempting to fight the crime, grime and infringement of by-laws.
He received a message (sic) saying: “It has come to our attention that you want to rule this area disturbing our businesses, we’ll not allow that, so we are going to make sure that u move out of this area, watch and see! We know where your wife works, car shes driving (******) registration known, your son is driving a **** and you are driving a volgsvagen kumbi, your son is@****** we know where he is studying, we know your office and people who are working for you, we are giving you a month to leave this area starting from today, this is the area (for) black africans, u are left alone, people like you are staying at sandton, leave before you see the wrath of black people, we are warning you, mother f***er!”
Smithers said he believed he was being targeted because he was trying to shut down illegal spaza shops, liquor outlets and other businesses that opened without permission.
He runs the Yeoville/Bellevue Community Development Trust, an NGO trying to uplift the two areas, as well as a community monthly newsletter in which he lists all liquor applications and transgressions.
“In every block there is a tuckshop open, many built illegally as brick structures on to houses with no approved plans… There is a culture of non-compliance.
“I have been trying to restore law and order in the area, but people get away with it, knowing nothing will happen and believe they are untouchable,” he said.
Smithers said although he had taken security precautions for his family, he didn’t feel an imminent threat, because “I have been given a month to leave the area”.
The alarmed Yeoville community called an urgent meeting in his support at the weekend.
Residents started a petition calling on the SAPS, the City of Joburg and the metro police to ensure the return of law and order to the Yeoville/Bellevue areas, and for effective steps to be taken to address the socio-economic challenges facing the suburbs in a comprehensive and sustainable manner.
Chairman of the Yeoville/ Bellevue Residents’ Association Father Tsepo Matubatuba said it was the ongoing failure of the authorities to enforce laws that had created the conditions which had led to the threat being levelled at Smithers. He called on the community to stand up and fight for the right to have a clean, safe and law-abiding area.
“It has also created conditions in which there is suspicion and intolerance,” he said.
Residents could leave the area in frustration, accept the status quo, or they could challenge it.
“However, challenging the status quo is risky… It is, therefore, the responsibility of the state to use its power and authority to create conditions in which there is basic respect for law and order,” said Matubatuba.
anna.cox@inl.co.za
The Star