About 2 000 residents from Khayelitsha spent Freedom Day marching through the centre of Cape Town. They were taking part in protest action to demand toilets and decent sanitation from the DA-run Cape Town council.

The local government has come under attack in recent months for what has been dubbed as the ‘toilet saga’ in Cape Town. Thousands of residents in the township do not have access to proper toilet and sanitation services.

Archibishop Thabo Makgoba, who led the protest march to the St George’s Cathedral, called on the council to treat the sanitation with a measure of urgency and added that the maintenance of sanitation services in Khayelitsha was also a priority.

Chairman of the Treatment Action Campaign, Zackie Achmat also addressed the crowd and started his speech with a call for silence in remembrance of Andries Thatane who was gunned down by police in Ficksburg during a protest over that council’s inability to deliver basic services.

From the St George’s cathedral, residents of Khayletisha marched to the civic centre to hand over a memorandum to Cape Town mayor, Dan Plato.

The memorandum was signed by more than 10 000 people and called on the city to improve the state of existing sanitation and to provide a time frame for each household to receive basic sanitation and water. There was no indication from residents of when they expected to receive these services

The process remained peaceful without any reports of looting or violence.

In a separate development, the shack-dwellers’ movement Abahlali Basemjondolo has urged people not to vote in the local elections on 18 May.

The movement is demanding that the city of Cape Town supply electricity to every shack in Khayelithsa in a move that’s aimed at cutting the number of shack fires that occur in the settlement every year.

Spokesman for the movement, Mzonke Poni claimed that the shack-dwellers in the township had “nothing to celebrate” after 17 years of democracy.

He said people were leaving the ANC to join the DA but were not doing so because they had confidence in another party but “because they are sick of all the empty promises”.

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