Cape Town mayor Dan Plato has accused the naked man who was
violently evicted from his shack of "tactically" undressing himself
before law enforcement officers approached his informal structure.
Bulelani Qholani, 28, was seen being manhandled and thrown
to the ground by at least four Cape Town law enforcement officers in a video
that has sparked outrage.
The officers were sent to demolish shacks at a site called
eThembeni, near Empolweni, in Khayelitsha.
The City of Cape Town has since suspended four officers who
were involved in the incident and is conducting an internal investigation.
Speaking to eNCA on Thursday, Plato said he spent the
afternoon watching footage recorded by officials. He said the footage he had
seen painted a different story and said the officers had seen the man clothed
at another shack before finding him next in the structure.
"Moments before our officials moved to that structure
that person did have clothes on... Initially he was not in the structure, he
was standing in the previous structure and moved into the structure and the
officers moved in.
"When he was standing in the doorway, and I do have
pictures right here in front me, he had clothes on and when the officers moved
into the structure he did not have clothes on," said the mayor.
Plato said the act of dwellers stripping themselves naked
and standing naked in front of structures was "common", adding it was
not the first time, nor would it be the last time such an incident happened.
Plato said the shacks that were being demolished were new
and were not linked with those that were ordered to be rebuilt by a court. He
said the structures were being built illegally on land the City of Cape Town
had earmarked for a housing development.
"But allow us to do a full-scale investigation and
that investigation is already underway. We have appointed a team to do the
investigation to scan the videos taken by the law enforcement officers of the
City of Cape Town and that will unravel, step by step, what the officers have
done. Let the investigation show us what really happened," he said.
"That person I am of the opinion it was staged act to
put the City of Cape Town in a bad light," he said.
When he was quizzed about Qholani being a family-centred
Christian man, Plato retorted: "People can say anything on
television."
Qholani told GroundUp on Thursday: “Yesterday, I was at
home in my house. The City of Cape Town came to evict me, and to break down my
house. I asked them: ‘Guys, where is your court order?’. They didn’t have a
court order. I told them, ‘Bring up the court order, bring up the permit’. I
was in my room, washing. I asked them to wait for two minutes outside the
house. The one guy would not listen to me. He came in and told me to get out. I
asked them for one minute. Then they threw me outside.
“I’ve been staying here at eThembeni for four months, since
16 March.”
IOL
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