Arrogant and greedy ignore rights of poor

FOLLOWING ON your editorial about District Six on February 4, I wish to add that reading about the injustices dished out to the residents of Bromwell Street brings back horrible memories of the Group Areas Act, only this time it is the work of rich, powerful and arrogant consortiums who, with their unlimited resources and the help of the DA-controlled City of Cape Town, feel the poor do not matter, and money and power is what life is about.

Bromwell Street reminds one that those who are so arrogant in dealing with the poor should remember that the land issue in South Africa (and in the rest of the world, including Trump’s massive property empire) should be re-examined in view of how land in colonised countries was acquired.

The future has to be addressed by any ruling party – not in the name of progress for the greedy, but in the knowledge that land previously belonged to the people of the land, and not by moving people to some wasteland out of the city precincts.

One truly hopes that some academic will come forward and expose the truth of the past, where land rights were given to settlers while driving out the original inhabitants of the land, as is happening in Bromwell Street, driving them from the land given by the Creator for all who lived, worked and tilled the land.

I sincerely hope that the debate will be kept alive.

If we are unable to go back to the past, we can at least curtail the access of the arrogant and greedy to a certain amount of land. To be included in such a debate is the eviction of farm workers where rights seemed to be overridden by arrogant farmers.

We need change and we need it fast if greed, lawlessness and wars are to be curtailed.