The men arrested for dumping human waste at Cape Town International Airport will stay in detention, the court ruled.
|||Cape Town - An advocate acting for the nine men arrested for dumping human waste at Cape Town International Airport, on Thursday demanded that his clients be released as the Guptas had not been arrested after landing their chartered plane at Waterkloof Air Force Base.
Barnabas Xulu told the Bellville Magistrate’s court the men had only been involved in “community-driven” protests because their dignity had been violated by Cape Town Metro’s failure to provide decent toilets.
Xulu added that, as “waste was spilled right and left” during protests these days, his clients shouldn’t be singled out for arrest.
If every protester who “spilled human waste” was arrested, the courts would become clogged with similar cases, he added.
However, the men will stay in detention until a bail hearing on July 4. In agreeing to the State’s request for seven days of detention, magistrate Jannie Kotze said it was “quite reasonable” for the State to ask for more time to prepare additional charges and follow up leads.
The State argued that, as six of the accused had previously been arrested for the same offence, if released on Thursday, there was a “great possibility” they would commit “the same or similar offences”.
At this stage, the men have only been charged with public violence, but the State said additional charges were expected.
The accused, including ANC councillor Loyiso Nkohla and former councillor Andile Lili, were arrested after emptying containers of faeces inside the airport terminal building on Tuesday afternoon.
Five of the group were detained at the airport exit, while four more were stopped while allegedly on their way to throw more waste.
Nkohla and Lili, who were out on warning for a similar offence when they allegedly dumped waste, have been leading residents from Khayelitsha, Nyanga and Guguletu in protests against the city’s sanitation services in the last few weeks.
They want portable toilets replaced with flush toilets.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said dumping human waste during protests was an “attack against the whole population”.
Despite the frustration among community members demanding better sewerage facilities, dumping human faeces was not the answer, he said.
“Human faeces contain deadly micro-organisms – like viruses, bacteria or larvae of parasites that can cause serious outbreaks of diseases, such as, but not limited to, cholera, typhoid, dysentery, parasitic diseases and diarrhoea on a wide scale.”
Motsoaledi said: “What is currently happening in the Western Cape defies all manner of logic and it is outright inhumane.”
The poor and not the “well to do” would be the worst affected should a disease break out as a result of the protests.
“For this reason, we call upon law enforcement agencies to take stern action against those involved, without any compromise, because the whole population must be protected,” he said.
Cape Times
