Saturday, April 9, 2011

Mandela's Speech 1990

Nelson Mandela:
Speech on Release from Prison, 1990

 

After a quarter century in jail, Nelson Mandela, the leader of the South African African National Congress, was released and faced the world's press in a speech carried live throughout the world.

Comrades and fellow South Africans, I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all. I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.

On this day of my release, I extend my sincere and warmest gratitude to the millions of my compatriots and those in every corner of the globe who have campaigned tirelessly for my release. I extend special greetings to the people of Cape Town, the city which has been my home for three decades. Your mass marches and other forms of struggle have served as a constant source of strength to all political prisoners.

I salute the African National Congress. It has fulfilled our every expectation In its role as leader of the great march to freedom.

I salute our president, Comrade Oliver Tambo, for leading the ANC even under the most difficult circumstances.

I salute the rank-and-file members of the ANC: You have sacrificed life and limb in the pursuit of the noble cause of our struggle.

I salute combatants of Umkhonto We Sizwe (the ANC's military wing) who paid the ultimate price for the freedom of all South Africans.

I salute the South African Communist Party for its sterling contribution to the struggle for democracy: You have survived 40 years of unrelenting persecution. The memory of great Communists like Bram Fisher and Moses Mabhida will be cherished for generations to come.
I salute General Secretary Joe Slovo, one of our finest patriots. We are heartened by the fact that the alliance between ourselves and the party remains as strong as it always was.
I salute the United Democratic Front, the National Education Crisis Committee, the South African Youth Congress, the Transvaal and Natal Indian Congresses, and COSATU, and the many other formations of the mass democratic movement.

I also salute the Black Sash and the National Union of South African Students. We note with pride that you have endured as the conscience of white South Africans, even during the darkest days of the history of our struggle. You held the flag of liberty high. The largescale mass mobilization of the past few years is one of the key factors which led to the opening of the final chapter of our struggle.

I extend my greetings to the working class of our country. Your organized strength is the pride of our movement: You remain the most dependable force in the struggle to end exploitation and oppression.

I pay tribute to the many religious communities who carried the campaign for justice forward when the organizations of our people were silenced.

I greet the traditional leaders of our country: Many among you continue to walk in the footsteps of great heroes.

I pay tribute for the endless heroism of youth: You, the young lions, have energized our entire struggle.

I pay tribute to the mothers and wives and sisters of our nation: You are the rock-hard foundation of our struggle. Apartheid has inflicted more pain on you than on anyone else.

On this occasion, we thank the world, we thank the world community for their great contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. Without your support, our struggle could not have reached this advanced stage.

The sacrifice of the front-line states will be remembered by South Africans forever.

My celebrations will be incomplete without expressing my deep appreciation for the strength that has been given to me during my long and gloomy years in prison by my beloved wife and family. I am convinced that your pain and suffering was far greater than my own.

Before I go any further, I wish to make the point that I intend making only a few preliminary comments at this stage. I will make a more complete statement only after I have had the opportunity to consult with my comrades.

Today, the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security.
The mass campaigns of defiance and other actions of our organizations and people can only culminate in the establishment of democracy.

The apartheid's destruction on our subcontinent is incalculable. The fabric of family life of millions of my people has been shattered. Millions are homeless and unemployed. Our economy lies in ruins and our people are embroiled in political strife.

Our resort to the armed struggle in 1960 with the formation of the military wing of the ANC (Umkhoto We Sizwe) was a purely defensive action against the violence of apartheid. The factors which necessitated the armed struggle still exist today. We have no option but to continue. We express the hope that a climate conducive to a negotiated settlement would be created soon, so that there may no longer be the need for the armed struggle.

I am a loyal and disciplined member of the African National Congress. I am therefore in full agreement with all of its objectives strategies and tactics.

The need to unite the people of our country is as important a task now as it always has been. No individual leader is able to take all this enormous task on his own. It is our task as leaders to place our views before our organization and to allow the democratic structures to decide on the way forward

On the question of democratic practice, I feel duty-bound to make the point that a leader of the movement is a person who has been democratically elected at a national congress. This is a principle which must be upheld without any exception.

Today, I wish to report to you that my talks with the government have been aimed at normalizing the political situation in the country. We have not yet begun discussing the basic demands of the struggle. I wish to stress that I myself have at no time entered negotiations about the future of our country, except to insist on a meeting between the ANC and the government.

Mr. de Klerk has gone further than any other nationalist president in taking real steps to normalize the situation. However, there are further steps, as outlined in the Harare declaration, that have to be met before negotiations on the basic demands of our people can begin.

I reiterate our call for, inter-alia, the immediate ending of the state of emergency and the freeing of all - and not only some - political prisoners.

Only such a normalized situation, which allows for free political activity, can allow us to consult our people in order to obtain a mandate.

The people need to be consulted on who will negotiate and on the content of such negotiations.
Negotiations cannot take their place above the heads or behind the backs of our people.
It Is our belief that the future of our country can only be determined by a body which is democratically elected on a non-racial basis.
Negotiations on the dismantling of apartheid will have to address the overwhelming demands of our people for a democratic, non-racial and unitary South Africa.

There must be an end to white monopoly on political power and a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems to ensure that the inequalities of apartheid are addressed, and our society thoroughly democratized.

It must be added that Mr. de Klerk himself is a man of integrity who is acutely aware of the dangers of a public figure not honoring his undertaking.

But as an organization, we base our policy and our strategy on the harsh reality we are faced with, and this reality is that we are still suffering under the policies of the nationalist government.
Our struggle has reached a decisive moment: We call on our people to seize this moment, so that the process toward democracy Is rapid and uninterrupted.

We have waited too long for our freedom. We can no longer wait. Now is the time to intensify the struggle on all fronts. To relax our efforts now would be a mistake which generations to come will not be able to forgive.

The sight of freedom looming on the horizon should encourage us to redouble our efforts. It Is only through disciplined mass action that our victory can be assured.

We call on our white compatriots to join us in the shaping of a new South Africa. The freedom movement is a political home for you, too.

We call on the international community to continue the campaign to isolate the apartheid regime.

To lift sanctions now would run the risk of aborting the process toward the complete eradication of apartheid.

Our march toward freedom is irreversible. We must not allow fear to stand in our way.

Universal suffrage on a common voters roll in a united, democratic and non-racial South Africa is the only way to peace and racial harmony.

In conclusion, I wish to go to my own words during my trial in 1964 - they are as true today as they were then:

I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But, if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.



http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1990MANDELA.html 

Pandora's Box 30



By Mike Smith

8th of April 2011


When F.W. de Klerk mounted the rostrum to open parliament for the 41st time on Friday the 2nd of February 1990, nobody except his cabinet and National Intelligence knew what was about to be announced…and obviously General Tienie Groenewald of Military Intelligence Com.Ops. who wrote the speech for him.

De Klerk unbanned several terrorist organizations, announced the freeing of Nelson Mandela and expressed a desire to renegotiate the future of South Africa with all concerned.

The Conservative Party showed their disgust with the speech by walking out of parliament.

After his speech South Africa would never be the same again and would continue on a downward spiral for all its citizens.

The press later dubbed it “Red Friday” and “The Red Speech”, because of all the Marxist terrorists that were unleashed on South Africa.

Later on De Klerk would cite the demise of Stalinist Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe as his main reasons for allowing him the opportunity to unban these organizations. He felt that without the support base from these former Communist countries, the “liberation movements” posed less of a threat.

Truth is that the economical and ideological support that these Marxist terrorist organizations were receiving came mostly from the West. From Churches, from charities, from singers, actors and other celebrities, from Scandinavian donors, etc…

De Klerk knew this. He was a member of the State Security Council (SSC) and had full access to all intelligence reports.

Nevertheless, De Klerk announced in his speech, “The season of violence is over. The time for reconstruction and reconciliation has arrived.”

We all know that hindsight is twenty-twenty, but of all the forms of wisdom, hindsight is probably the least merciful, the most unforgiving.

Truth is that De Klerk’s speech on the 2nd of February 1990  did not end the season of violence, it started it. Between his speech in 1990 and 1994 South Africa experienced the most violent period in her history.

On the 11th of February 1990, arch Communist Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela walked hand-in-hand with his wife Winnie out of Victor Verster prison near Paarl. He was whisked away to Cape Town’s City Hall from where he would make his first public address in 27 years…a rather unforgiving and resentful speech in front of 80,000 people.

He called for the intensification of the struggle on all fronts, saying, “Now is the time to intensify the struggle on all fronts” and he called for. “redoubling” of efforts in the armed struggle. He further called for the continuation of sanctions against South Africa and the isolation of the Pretoria regime. He called for more rolling mass action saying, “It is only through disciplined mass action that our victory can be assured.”

Hardly reconciliatory and peaceful. Rather, it sounded like Mandela was on the war path.
Mandela's complete speech.  

After his speech he spent his first night out of prison at the mansion of Champagne Socialist, Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, in Bishops Court.

In the next two months mass action intensified in Tokoza (80,000), Daveyton, (60,000), Alexandra (50,000) etc. By the end of April 1990, 25 policemen were killed, their homes demolished with front-end loaders….the SAIRR monitored more than 400 assaults on councilors and policemen from January to July 1990.

The institute’s CEO John Kane-Berman later wrote in his book, “Political Violence in South Africa”, pg 58 that more than half of these incidents were never reported in any of the six English newspapers in Johannesburg. Almost no photographs either, “yet Right-wing violence and intimidation were regularly featured, prominently displayed, and reported on by teams of investigative journalists, accompanied by photographers”.

Unrest in the Black homelands of Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei escalated with murder and bomb blasts…the season of violence was only starting.

What were the whites feeling at the time?

At this stage whites were mostly unaffected by the violence. It was still mostly in the black townships and the homelands. Whites still had hope. They thought the violence would soon dissipate. After all Nelson Mandela was free, Apartheid laws were for the most part scrapped and South Africa was on the road to black rule…Why the violence?

Further, De Klerk and Mandela promised that the season of violence was over and the whites naively swallowed it all.

In Natal, virtual civil war erupted between the ANC (who bought youths over to their side with R50 notes) and the IFP. Still the whites hoped it would all be over soon.

Where were De Klerk and Mandela at this stage?

They were dogging each other’s footsteps in Europe and the USA, De Klerk asking for sanctions to be lifted and Mandela asking for sanctions to remain until he was in power.

South West Africa becomes Namibia

During the same time President De Klerk and Foreign Minister Pik Botha were involved in giving more South African territory away, namely South West Africa and the South African harbor Walvis Bay.

A brief history of the South West issue is here necessary. The vast land between the Kunene River in the North and the Orange River in the South is for the most part a desert. It was of no use to the British during the nineteenth century and all they were interested in were the Penguin islands and the deep water port of Walvis Bay which they annexed in 1878. The rest of the land became a German colony since 1884. The Caprivi Strip became part of SWA in 1890.

During the Second Anglo-Boer War, the Germans supported the Boers, but when the Boers surrendered in 1902 they had to pledge legion to the Crown of England…which they reluctantly did. Thousands of Boers refused to do so and rather emigrated to Argentina.

In 1910 South Africa became a Union made up of the Two Boer Republics of The Orange Free State and The Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek as well as the two British Colonies of The Cape and Natal.

At this stage Walvis Bay became part of South Africa.

In 1914 the First World War broke out in Europe and it presented a nice opportunity for the British to test the loyalty of the Boers. Prime Minister Louis Botha was asked to annex SWA on behalf of the British Crown, basically going to war with their former friends the Germans. It further has to be remembered that a great deal of Boers to this day are themselves from German decent. At the time of 1914 many could still speak German.

This sparked a rebellion by General Manie Maritz and some others who saw an opportunity to restore the old Boer Republics. They managed to get a total of about 3000 men together. Generals Jan Smuts and Louis Botha along with 32,000 troops of which about 20,000 were former Boers themselves quelled the rebellion and by 1915 South West Africa came under South African control. Please note how the majority of the Boers were now fighting on the side of the British…not on the side of Maritz and De La Rey.

At the end of the First World War, Germany was bankrupt and could not run the colony again. Britain did not want it, because it was a useless desert, so the League of Nations put it under a mandated rule by South Africa.

According to this mandate South Africa had to introduce its laws and protect the citizens, by amongst other things keeping out hostile foreign forces.

The League of Nations seized to exist when the United Nations was created, but the UN was not the automatic successor of the League of Nations.

When the UN wanted SWA under their control South Africa objected, because at that stage the South Africans have built up SWA complete with harbours, dams, roads, airports, and other infrastructure. SWA was for all intents and purposes a fifth province of South Africa, although it was never officially incorporated.

The International Court of Justice in 1966 further ruled in South Africa’s favour and said that South Africa was not obliged to hand over SWA to the UN and should continue its supervisory role.

Despite this ruling by the ICJ in 1966, the UN unilaterally ended South Africa’s mandate in SWA.

In 1971, acting on a request for advisory opinion from the United Nations Security Council, the ICJ ruled that the continued presence of South Africa in Namibia was illegal and that South Africa was under an obligation to withdraw from Namibia immediately. It also ruled that all member states of the United Nations were under an obligation to recognize the invalidity of any act performed by South Africa on behalf of Namibia.

Since 1966 until 1989 (for 23 years) two generations of mainly White but also Coloured, Indian and Black men would fight on the Namibian Angola border to keep out the Marxist terrorist insurgents and keep the citizens of Namibia, of all races, free from Communist oppression and genocide that was rife in the rest of Africa, basically everywhere where the Communists took over.

On the 21st of March 1990, the 30th anniversary of the Sharpeville incident, De Klerk handed over the keys of Namibia to South Africa’s former enemies, the Marxist terrorist SWAPO. For 14 years prior to that, Foreign Minister Pik Botha along with his friends, Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State, were planning this treacherous event whilst sending South African men to die on the border.

For almost a century South African taxpayer money went into Namibia to build up infrastructure on par with South Africa. Hospitals, schools, universities, roads…everything was built with the money of South Africans.

Pik Botha and F.W. De Klerk gave it all away with no mandate from the South African voters. In 1994 even the official South African territory of Walvis Bay was given away with no referendum, no mandate and no compensation whatsoever.

This was an act of high treason. De Klerk had no right to give away property that did not belong to him and in fact belonged to South Africans.

Nevertheless, at the handing over of Namibia on the 21st of March, De Klerk again echoed his words from the 2nd of February. He called himself an “Advocate of peace” and the “Season of violence was over”. It proved to be a trifle too optimistic.

Irreversible change

As De Klerk and Mandela traveled the world for the rest of 1990, one would constantly hear De Klerk making reference to “Irreversible Change”.

For instance, on the 24th of September 1990 De Klerk addressed the Washington National Press Club, expressing his satisfaction over President Bush accepting the “Irreversibility” of change in South Africa.

During a ceremony at the Rose Garden that same morning he used the word “irreversible” five times and it bounced off his lips another few times in the question and answer session that followed.

The “irreversibility” of change was a precondition of the lifting of sanctions, but it also signaled at that stage that for the whites of South Africa, the time was over. The omelette was scrambled. There was no turning back.

In October 1990 despite major violence, the State of Emergency had been lifted totally and Foreign Minister Pik Botha informed the President of the UN General Assembly that more “than 100 discriminatory laws and regulations have been repealed and only three Apartheid Laws still remained”.

Two of these, The Group Areas Act and the Lands Act, Botha promised would be repealed at the opening of Parliament in early 1991. The Third one, The Population Registration Act could only be adopted if the new constitution was accepted.

This is where it gets interesting

The Population Registration Act was the cornerstone of not only Apartheid, but as well as the Tri-cameral Constitution of 1983. Scrapping it would not only bring down Apartheid, but the Government itself and would leave a void. It was a constitutional impossibility to scrap the Population Registration Act.

The entire Tri-cameral constitution was based on the fact that there were different houses of parliament (House of Assembly-Whites, House of Representatives-Coloureds, and House of Delegates- Indians).

If the NP government scrapped this Act, it would mean there would not be anymore Whites, Coloureds and Indians as per definition. Everyone would be equal in front of the law.

It would mean that the NP would have to dissolve the entire government, call an election and that the people of South Africa would have to create a new constitution.

There was no way around this and the NP knew it. If the NP wanted to remain in power it could not repeal the Population Registration Act. If they did repeal the act, they would be committing political suicide and lose all power.

F.W. de Klerk himself was a lawyer and he knew this only too well. There was only one way to pull this off. They had to play the biggest confidence-trick on the whites voters of South Africa.

How to con Whites out of power 101

The government was fully advised by MI and NIS on how to do this.

General Tienie Groenewald was the protégé of Eschel Rhoodie and the chief expert on propaganda as well as psychological warfare. He knew the South African public intimately. He would play a major role in what happened next.

By early 1991 Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok released figures on violence in South Africa. A total of 17,088 incidents of unrest in 1990 set a new record. (The Star, Johannesburg, 11th of February 1991).

The Civil War between the IFP and the ANC spread from Natal to the townships around Johannesburg and Pretoria.

The death toll in the first four months of 1990 stood at 1400; about the same as for the entire year before. By the end of 1990 there had been 3700 deaths in political violence. This was 163% increase over the 1400 deaths in 1989. Since the war between the IFP and the ANC started in the late 1980’s the death toll now topped the 7000 mark. There was surely no “end to the season of violence” as De Klerk promised.

On the 1st of February 1991 De Klerk again opened parliament with a speech. As everyone expected, he announced the repealing of the Group areas Acts and the Land Acts.

He sprung a surprise when he announced that also the Population Registration Act of 1950 would be repealed, despite earlier indications that such a step would be constitutionally impossible.

Les De Villiers write in his book “In sight of Surrender”, page 179…

“On the part of the Government”, De Klerk explained, “the view was held that the Population Registration Act would have to be repealed eventually, but that this could not be done immediately because the Act was technically necessary for the maintenance of the present constitutional dispensation. Therefore it would be possible to repeal the Act only once a new constitution had been implemented.”

Further investigation, he announced, showed that it was, in fact, possible to repeal this Act, provided that it was accompanied by the adoption of “temporary Transitional Measures” toward the acceptance of a new constitution”.

De Klerk was lying through his teeth. It could not be done. He did not fool the opposition Conservative Party. De Klerk's speech was interrupted by jeers and cries of "traitor" from white opposition Conservative Party members. Some were forcefully ejected, which prompted a walkout by the remainder of the 41 party members.

After this speech, more violence and rolling mass action by tens of thousands of blacks took place. The townships were in chaos. Necklace murders were the order of the day…

De Klerk waited until the Currie Cup Rugby season was in full swing. The White public, for whom Rugby is a second religion, would be totally fixated on the biggest sporting event on the calendar. At that stage the Rugby World Cup was only a few months away and South Africa would once again not be able to partake due to sports boycotts.

The human mind does not like chaos. It is repulsed by horrible acts of violence such as necklace murders. It wants order and calm. On the television, radio and newspapers the public was bombarded with scenes of horrible violence, chaos and mass action across the country as well as, at the same time, the beautiful game of Rugby. People wanted an end to this chaos they just wanted to watch Rugby, but instead it was getting worse by the day.

The Intelligence operatives knew exactly what they were doing. They relied on another factor; The political blindness, naivety and ignorance of the greater white electorate.

Probably 99% of them had never read the Constitution or the Population Registration Act let alone understand it. They simply trusted the NP to take care of them…they just wanted to watch the Rugby, have a beer and forget about the violence ripping across the country.

At a special ceremony on Thursday the 27th of June 1991at his office in the Union Buildings, in Pretoria, President F.W. De Klerk signed off on the last three remaining Apartheid Laws in full view of the world press and television cameras.

According to De Klerk, the scrapping of the Group Areas Act, the Land Act and the Population Registration Act meant that the book on Apartheid was closed.

What De Klerk forgot to add was that when he did that, he also closed the book on himself and his government.

From that day onwards, the NP had no constitutional right to govern anymore, they had no mandate anymore. There was no interim transitional measures in place, nothing.

On the 27th of June 1991, the National Party Government became an unconstitutional and illegal government.

That makes everything they have done afterwards also illegal, including the 1992 referendum and the negotiations on behalf of the whites of South Africa. The entire 1994 election was illegal and the ANC government today is therefore illegal.

One would ask today, “But why did the lawyers not do anything? Surely they knew what was going on.”

Yes. They knew full well what was going on. ONE man…one such a lawyer raised his voice.

His name was Jaap Marais, the leader of the HNP (Herstigde Nasionale Party or the Reconstituted National Party), a small rightwing faction that broke from the NP in 1969.

Jaap Marais said that the NP was an illegal government and had no right or mandate to govern. He was 100% right. Marais called for a boycott of all elections since then. Taking part in any election after 27 June 1991 would give legitimacy to such an election and therefore legitimacy to the ANC Marxist regime.

Problem was that the HNP catered exclusively for the Afrikaners and almost all their literature and speeches were in Afrikaans. The HNP even refused to translate their name into English, rejecting bilingualism. They were seen as a fringe, extremist, and somewhat Calvinistic religious fanatic, right-wing group, mostly because of disinformation by the liberal media and the NP government.

Even so, Marais prided himself on his command of the English language and would gently correct English-speaking interviewers on their grammar and syntax. He was a devotee of poetry, particular the works of John Keats and T S Eliot, and had translated Shakespeare's Julius Caeser into Afrikaans. He was also a connoisseur of fine wines - and an acclaimed breeder of budgerigars, winning many international awards for this hobby, some of them from Britain. Source Tellegraph

To his dying day he continued to recall the good old ways of apartheid and to predict the eventual inevitable collapse of a foolhardy experiment with multiracial democracy. He never forgave the British for the Anglo Boer War in which both his parents were interned.

Pity… Maybe if the HNP took a more reconciliatory and unifying stance and catered for all the whites in SA instead of just the Afrikaners and adopted bilingualism, they would probably have been taken more seriously at the time and would have mustered more support.

I am not sure if there were any other lawyers at the time that also realised that the whites of South Africa were being conned out of their country, but if there were, they were few and far between and certainly not mentioned in the media.

At the end of the day, the Intelligence operatives won. The NP remained in power and the Whites of South Africa carried on watching Rugby while the townships were burning…The whites had confidence in the NP and believed they knew what they were doing. They firmly believed that the NP was acting in the best interest of South Africa and its people.



http://mspoliticalcommentary.blogspot.com/2011/04/opening-pandoras-apartheid-box-part-30.html

3 comments:

Andrea Muhrrteyn said...
Wow -- history that must must be told. Thanks!!! Again and Again!
Anonymous said...
Not much has changed since then ,most whites all they want is there rugby and braai on the weekends and to hell with the rest. Tomorrow they wake up and read of another murder or rape statistic until one day they become the statistic and then they must thank there rugby god. When will people wake up to the truth? Captivating read Mike keep up the good work. Groete Boerelander
Anonymous said...
Yet again, a fantastic piece from the pen... hmmm, keyboard of Mike! As Boerelander above said... captivating. Krakende Kakebene

Residents threaten ANC

April 8 2011


Police opened fire with rubber bullets and two men were arrested on charges of public violence after a group of angry Nyanga residents took to the streets to issue the ANC with a warning: withdraw the ward candidate the party has named for the area, or they’ll vote for the DA.
Residents of ward 37 in Nyanga insist that the ANC has named the “wrong” candidate for ward councillor and some are threatening to punish the party at the polls by voting for the DA.
 
Others say they don’t want to have to vote for the DA, because they remain loyal ANC supporters, but they are angry with how the ANC has handled the selection of its councillor for the ward, which covers the areas of Nyanga east of Abonwabisi and E Mjodo, west of Zwelitsha and south of Sithandatu streets.
 
Last year, the ANC lost a key ward in one of its traditional strongholds to the DA - ward 44, which covers part of Gugulethu and Heideveld.
 
The Western Cape ANC has admitted that it is aware of the problem in ward 37, and its provincial secretary, Songezo Mjongile, told the Cape Argus today that similar scenarios were playing out in wards across the province.
 
But the party is blaming those who lost out on being nominated as ward councillors for organising the protests.
 
Police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Andre Traut said about 200 people had barricaded Zwelitsha Drive yesterday evening.
 
The people had thrown stones at police vehicles patrolling the area, Traut said.
“Police were duty bound to take action and rubber bullets were fired to disperse the crowd, who posed a threat to the community.” 
 
Two men, aged 21 and 25, had been arrested on a charge of public violence and were due to appear in court today, he said.
 
No injuries were reported.
The majority of the protesters had dispersed by late last night, and a police Nyala and several smaller police vehicles were guarding the intersection, which was strewn with rubbish, stones and still-smouldering tyres.
 
A number of power-line poles had been uprooted.
About 30 residents marched to the Nyanga police station at about 9pm to in an unsuccessful bid to negotiate the release of the two men who had been arrested for public violence. 
 
Outside the police station, the group explained that the trouble in ward 37 had started last month when the ANC had presented them with four ward councillor candidates.
The residents explained that they had favoured two candidates - Lindiwe Batsela and Mxeke Templeton - and were shocked when they heard days later that Mzimasi Mansali had been chosen.
 
Resident Amos Sigadi said the community was unhappy.
“They surprised us when the results came out - it was the wrong person,” said Sigadi.
Since then, he said, residents had held meetings with ANC leaders in an attempt to overturn Mansali’s selection.
 
Another resident, Minky Bacela, said they had decided to give ANC members an ultimatum at a meeting yesterday: if the candidate was not changed, they would vote for the DA.
 
“That was the outcome of the meeting,” she said
The residents did not want to have to vote for the DA, Bacela said. “We don’t support the DA. We still support the ANC, but we want the right ANC candidate.”
Provincial secretary Mjongile said there were similar situations in other parts of the Western Cape. The party was having regular meetings with the residents of ward 37, he said. 
 
“There is a process. We are engaged with people in various areas where there is unhappiness about the selection.
“But we have noted that it is the people who lost who are largely behind these protests. 
 
“They mobilise sections of the wards. And this is not unique to ward 37.”
Mjongile said the registration process for candidates was closed, and the candidates had been selected using “democratic ANC structures”.

http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/residents-threaten-anc-1.1054430