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ANC, parliament slam Cape Town police over eviction of naked man

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ANC, parliament slam Cape Town police over eviction of naked man

ANC, parliament slam Cape Town police over eviction of naked man

2nd July 2020

By: African News Agency

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South Africa's parliamentary committee on police has denounced law enforcement officers in Cape Town who evicted a naked man from his informal dwelling in the Khayelitsha township, after a video of the incident went viral on social media on Wednesday.

Committee chairperson Tina Joemat-Pettersson said she had summoned the leadership of Cape Town’s municipal police service to give an explanation on the incident, during which the police officers allegedly refused to allow the man to get dressed and seemed intent on publicly humiliating him.

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"Law enforcement officers have a mandate ‘to protect and serve’, and this mandate was undermined in this instance." she said, adding that the officers grossly violated the man’s right to human dignity as enshrined in South Africa's Constitution. 

The actions were even more reprehensible given that such evictions were prohibited under the state of national disaster the government had declared in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Joemat-Pettersson said.

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The Cape Town council, which is run by the country's main opposition Democratic Party, said it was in the process of suspending those involved in the debacle pending further investigation and disciplinary procedures.

"We are saddened by the conduct depicted on the video footage, and we do not condone any forceful and dehumanising conduct by our staff members,’ the city's executive director for safety and security Richard Bosman said in a statement dated Wednesday.

The council said the land on which the dwelling was situated belonged to the city, which had conducted various operations to prevent illegal occupation. After the removal of illegal structures, new attempts were made to invade again on a daily basis, it added.

Joemat-Pettersson slammed the Cape Town council for being "inhumane" by evicting the occupants of illegal dwellings in the middle of winter, despite a call by the minister of human settlements to stop this.

"The city police is not a law unto itself and must be held to account. There is no private police force in the country and the municipal police conduct in this regard is shocking,” she said.

She also requested that the Independent Police Investigative Directorate investigate the incident and hold officers and senior management involved in the incident accountable. 

The national governing African National Congress party, which is in opposition in Cape Town, said the eviction of the naked man, who was taking a bath in his shack when the metro police pounced, was "barbaric and against the spirit of our democracy".

“They acted illegally because they did not have a court or a warrant. This man is shattered. We condemn this inhumane and barbaric action," the African National Congress's Xolani Sotashe said in a statement, adding that the party was demanding urgent answers from the Cape Town council.

There have been several reports of brutality recently by law enforcement officers during a lockdown imposed by the government under the state of national disaster in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, to try and contain the virus.

Last month, the South African National Defence Force said it condemned acts of violence after a video clip surfaced of an unidentified man dressed in army fatigues assaulting a woman. 

In April Collins Khoza, a resident of Johannesburg's Alexandra township, died at the hands of soldiers and metro police after a severe beating for allegedly breaking lockdown rules.

An internal report into the incident by the military appeared to exonerate those implicated in Khoza's death, sparking nationwide outrage.

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