WATCH: MPs show 'no interest' in hunger striker outside Parliament
|Published
STARVE: Fadiel Adams at Parly STARVE: Fadiel Adams at Parly
MPs have shown "no interest" in Fadiel Adams’ hunger strike outside Parliament – aside from an ACDP MP who came for “small talk”.
On the sixth day of his hunger strike last night, the Gatvol Capetonian activist told the Cape Times he is not surprised by the lack of a response from the powers-that-be to his call for President Cyril Ramaphosa to put an immediate stop to the murder and mayhem raging on the Cape Flats.
“These people are not interested about what’s happening on the Cape Flats. They are not interested in the dead or the dying. That’s why I am still here.
“Three-thousand people died (on the Cape Flats last year) and nothing happened. One more is not going to make a difference is it?
"People can take this any way they like. Poor lives don’t matter. Brown lives in particular don’t matter. It’s sad but it is what it is.
“Something is going to have to happen here and I think if this ANC doesn’t know it yet, they are going to face a full-scale revolt in this country and it’s not going to be a colour issue.
“It’s going to be a poverty issue, a hunger issue, a safety and homeless issue, because they have done nothing but drive us deeper into a hole we were trying to get out of.”
He said the reality of death and what he could face if he continues with his hunger strike hit home yesterday.
“My brother-in-law almost died today from a heart-related problem. There’s still no guarantee that he is going to be okay.
“He is critical, not stable. It does bring the reality of death closer.”
He has erected a tent outside Parliament and started taking in “minimal fluids” on Sunday evening after his kidneys started playing up, but is still not going to give up in his battle for a better life for people living on the Cape Flats and Western Cape.
He wants the “right army” sent in: “doctors, social workers, the skills developers. Giving our kids the opportunities to become more than just gangsters".
On the sixth day of his hunger strike last night, Fadiel Adams said he is not surprised by the lack of a response from the powers-that-be. Video: IOL
Among the sacrifices he is having to make is missing his 9-year-old son giving a speech at school today “on the lack of manners of pupils at school”.
“I don’t want to be here. It’s cold, I’m hungry, I’m tired. But this is what someone has got to do.
"I don’t want to be the one doing it. But someone’s got to do it, no one else is volunteering."