Residents vow to fight to protect Bo-Kaap heritage

Bo-Kaap residents will continue to protest and fight for their heritage rights to be protected until the day they face Blok Developments in court on December 6.

This is according to Bo-Kaap Civic Association (BKCA) secretary Jacky Poking, who spoke on the community’s stance going forward, after civic organisations in the area were served an interdict from Blok last week, prohibiting community members from entering erf 2970.

A demonstration against gentrification in the area last week turned sour after four people were arrested and some injured following police brutality. Poking said the community was preparing to demonstrate every evening in coming weeks and had also created an online petition called “Save our Bo-Kaap, Save our African Heritage, Stop all Developments”.

“We are going to oppose the interdict Blok took out against the community, we encourage community members injured in the protest to write down their stories and we want to document that and take it to SAPS.

“The petition is to show the amount of support there is for the heritage overlay zone in Bo-Kaap and show the new mayor the support it has. We want the petition to show the big outcry there is on why heritage overlay zone is needed in Bo-Kaap.”

BKCA chairperson Osman Shaboodien said the petition already had over 25000 signatures, as many people are opposed to “destructive developers”.

Shaboodien said the organisation was studying the interdict and were discussing a legal way forward to ensure that they were not faced with a similar situation with developers in future.

Cape Argus