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Anti-ANC rioters torch municipal buildings in 3 towns

 

Diepsloot, Jagersfontein, Piet Retief… the anti-ANC riots, which started early last week in the town of Piet Retief, have also sprung up in Diepsloot and Jagersfontein. Thus far two people have died when angry township residents started torching municipal buildings. In all three events, the rioting was directly caused by people’s dismay that the ANC-government had failed to keep its election promises…

Diepsloot in May last year, also became infamous worldwide due to a horrendously violent campaign of xenophobic violence in which thousands of non-South African black Africans had been chased from the township by organised, armed gangs – which also torched several people in front of the international news cameras.

This weekend, Diepsloot became the third town within just a week to plunge itself into well-organised rioting. The lights went out on Sunday night after citizens angrily objected to their planned forced removal to another squatter town in Brits, north-West of Pretoria. Roads were barricaded with burning tyres and furniture, large rocks littered the streets, and police fired rubber bullets at the unruly crowd. And there was massive looting of shops in all three riots. Last night, a Diepsloot shop-owner cried: "All my things are gone. They have taken everything."

  • This protest, which started around 10am, was held to demonstrate dissatisfaction over the allocation of houses and the fact that some of the shack dwellers were once again being moved, this time to an informal settlement in Brits, north-west of Pretoria.The situation remained volatile as police continued to patrol several hotspots including the busy R511, where several cars passing by were stoned or had windows smashed by angry residents.Diepsloot came about when many shack dwellers were moved from Alexandra to a new area near Fourways, where they said they were promised that houses would be built for them. More than 10 years later, residents say they have yet to see the promised housing. Residents on Sunday said they were angered after they were informed that they were going to be moved again to make way for new developments."We'll only move out of shacks when we get new houses that we were promised," said Martina Matlaila.Another resident, Mpho Letsoalo, said the community had taken to the streets because the councillor would not address them on housing issues. "Some residents are asking for the government to prepare land around here and give them stands so that they can build their own houses but that, too, won't happen," Letsoalo said. "People here are fed up with empty promises by the government."
  •  http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20090706060754336C149753

Jagersfontein – Free State: architectural gem torched by angry mob:

July 4 2009 – JAGERSFONTEIN, South Africa. Some 700 angry black people took to the streets of the southern Free State town of Jagersfontein and burnt down its historic municipal building – designed by famous British architect Sir Herbert Baker. The crowd was angry because the impoverished town can’t raise enough tax revenue to sustain its bulging budget. Some 500 municipal workers had to be laid off. The black residents also were angry because the ANC’s campaign promises of “free housing, free utilities and free schooling for all” simply cannot be met with the town’s shrinking budget.

JagersfonteinMunicipalBuildingTorchedJuly32009ZA

These ‘protestors’ also form part of the countrywide mob which with depressing regularly throws such violence-driven temper tantrums over most weekends.

Piet Retief too

Community members burn a car which ploughed into the funeral reception of Christopher Motha and Phuphu Mthethwa in Thandakukhanya, Piet Retief, Mpumalanga.

Picture: KEVIN SUTHERLAND 04/07/2009

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W: 30cm Similar scenes also played in Piet Retief, where a mob, armed with petrol bombs, pangas, pitchforks, knobkerries and axes, laid into government buildings and possessions, setting fire to clinics, libraries, community halls and vehicles belonging to the municipality. They burned tyres, barricaded roads with rocks and metal scraps, blocked the N2 highway and destroyed the railway line.Then, their anger still not assuaged, they turned on the Pakistani shopkeepers — before taking aim at the mayor whose house they ransacked and set alight. In the melee, Phuphu Mthethwa, 29, and Christopher Jele, 21, died.

White taxpayers have become poor whites – and tax budgets are shrinking countrywide

SundayTimes_SA taxpayers are getting poorer Jagersfontein’s former taxpaying population, i.e. the whites who mainly worked in the local mining industries and kept the tax-coffers filled, have become unemployable because of the ANC’s own anti-white labour laws.

The few remaining whites, with the exception of the undertaker, now are dirt-poor and barely able to eke out a living. The municipal budget now simply doesn’t get enough taxes from these former ratepayers– and thus cannot fulfill the ruling ANC party’s constant campaign promises to give ‘free water, free housing, free schooling and free electricity to all’.  Countrywide, a full one-third of the entire Afrikaner nation --  one-million often top-educated taxpayers and employers of millions of black workers --  have now become homeless, unemployable due to anti-white labour laws and so destitute that they need daily food-handouts from the Helping Hand charity of Solidarity trade union for their existence.

South Africa’s ruling party is indeed facing a serious, often violent revolt in all its poorest black communities - even resulting in no-go areas for its members. ANC-councillors are beaten, shot and burned out of their homes. Party meetings have been ambushed. Local branches have disbanded or gone to ground. A breakaway party had to be crushed with a heavy hand during the latest election, which could only be won by Jacob Zuma’s overwhelming charm and promises, promises, promises….

  • Fifteen years after the end of apartheid, some 12-million people live in tin shacks or makeshift housing --  a quarter of the official South African population, reports the Guardian newspaper... And that’s a whole lot worse than the housing was provided by the apartheid-government --  in fact the current shantytown population has soared by 50% over the past decade…
  • Yet eighty percent of all these many tens of millions of shacks also are connected to the national electricity grid and 68% of all these many millions of poor people also receive free daily water rations.

Back in Jagersfontein this week, the local school principal De Wet Holtzhausen says that the crowd has torched ‘an invaluable memorial’ to the town’s unique history. Indeed: this unassuming municipal building – like most of the old buildings in this historic mining-town -- was designed by famous UK architect Sir Herbert Baker. He was the dominant force in South African architecture for two decades, 1892–1912.

Jagersfontein was built in the former Boer republic of the Orange Free State. It is the world’s oldest diamond-mining town: the very first place on the planet where diamonds were discovered in its motherstone or blue ground, or as it’s now known, Kimberlite.  The farm where the diamonds were first found -- once the property of a Griqua farmer, Jacobus Jagers, became the town of Jagersfontein, founded in 1871. Jagers sold the farm in 1854 – long before the diamond rush started from 1870 when farmer J J de Klerk found a 50 carat (10 g) diamond. This was about three years before diamonds were discovered 130 km away at Kimberley.

Jagersfontein thrived. In 1892, Baker designed its municipal buildings.  It also was the first town in the independent Boer- Republic of the  Orange Free State to have electricity and a piped water supply. Sir Herbert Baker designed many other buildings in Jagersfontein too -- amongst which are the Dutch Reformed Church, these shops on the left & the bank. Jagersfontein has since fallen into sad disappear, described by 2005 as a ‘ghost town where the dreams of poor white people go to die.’ The few white people who remain eke out a living any way they can. They are poor and without any future, and all say Jagersfontein has become a ghost town ‘where the whites are eking out a living and the blacks are thriving’...

  • However clearly, the black population still isn’t satisfied.  On July 2 2009, the municipal building – South Africa’s architectural gem dating back from its earliest mine-pioneering years -- was torched by a group of black residents who threw a temper tantrum over the fact that they still don’t get the free housing, the free piped water and the free electricity which had been promised them by the ANC-government during its last three election campaigns.

In an organised campaign this week, the township residents blocked access to the dusty Karoo town with burning barricades, demanding to speak to the Free State premier, Ace Magashule. When he failed to show up, they torched the municipal building.  click here for link to above story

JAGERSFONTEIN HISTORY

map and businesses in Jagersfontein:

Historic documentation of Sir Herbert Baker

Townships in revolt because of ANC’s failed campaign promises – The Guardian:

Anti-white labour laws and anti-white hatespeech sweeps across South Africa: