The Mughammadiyyah Masjied committee in Tennyson Street, Salt River, has launched an online petition, calling on the City of Cape Town to institute concrete changes to the by-law relating to noise nuisances.
In the petition on Change.org, the committee said the petition is being launched after Mayor Geording Hill-Lewis announced on 27 April 2022 that the “Noise and Nuisance” section of the Streets, Public Spaces and Prevention of Noise and Nuisances By-law is no longer applicable to designated places of worship.
But instead of changing the by-law, the mayor only updated the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and “thus the by-law is still very much in place”.
The City conceded its officials needed training in the updated laws but the mosque says the updated SOP is not enough to protect zoned religious institutions from noise complaints.
Mosque liaison, Anwar Omar, reportedly said that the SOP leaves it open to Hill-Lewis’ successor to interpret the by-law to include the sounds coming from religious institutions.
A City official who was apparently unaware of the changes to the SOP had taken action against the mosque over the athaan after receiving a complaint from a resident.
Omar says that the athaan is only three minutes long, and does not exceed the noise level.
The mosque said that according to the mayor, the SOP does exempt places of worship from the by-law and therefore there is no reason to go the more rigorous, public participatory, democratic route of amending the by-law.
But they disagree and are hoping to collect 100 000 signatures to their petition to force the City to reopen the process to the public.
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