Thread by @SoliPhilander

Because of that distinct difference between ‘getting people of the street’ and actually addressing the factors behind the constantly escalating housing crisis in Cape Town. But as been shown, it is a different crisis for the City - For them it is the idea that the visibility of

https://twitter.com/contestedspaces/status/1443459394696630272

Homeless People is the issue. Their inadequacy to effectively address it and now criminalising their existence is not up for consideration. Get them off the street and punish them into the system. And any criticism of their failure - evident in the number and treatment of

Homeless People - Take the wide support they apparently have for this? Well, it buys completely into the narrative of Homeless People being on the street ‘by choice’, and their refusal to endure say, something like the Strandfontein Relocation Camp, speaks of their refusal to

be helped. The same camp that the City swears the Human Rights Commission took issue with because they are ‘targeting the City’ - In fact, any criticism of the City’s inability to positively impact on poor people’s lives is seen as an attack on The City, driven by some political

agenda. The City is successful because the City says so. Those that benefit from this, find it easy to believe. Those who speak of lived experience relegated to Social Justice Warriors - yup, calling for Social Justice is an abhorrent thing to the City.

Why this abundance in

Homelessness though? These are the questions that don’t get asked. And if they are, they are made off as people’s inability to cope with personal circumstance and factors of environment.
Homeless People are dangerous, unsightly and unworthy of their presence in some surroundings

The City has the perfect answer. Do what they have done all these years, with limited success, but now force people into their under-resourced, inadequate systems, with the law. And eventually blame those systems when they can’t keep up.

And apparently none of this is in the

least bit racist at all.

This is just The City Of Cape Town. Proudly so. And you can imagine what a ball the racists are having. No wait, luckily we have none of those