Plett Riots: Media Throws Bathwater Out With Baby

Wrong! The Plett story was not about a little baby getting killed by a stray bullet in a township.

Babies get killed every day in South Africa. It's not news.

The reporters (and news editors and editors) missed the point entirely.

The story was about the full-scale riots in the squatter camps that smother Plettenberg Bay in Western Cape.

The riots (not protests as the mainstream press would have it) were so widespread that police from Mossel Bay, George and Oudtshoorn had to be summoned to help suppress the uprising.

Just like back in 1976 black people (i.e. the poverty-stricken Xhosas who have fled from the bankrupt Eastern Cape province to this Western Cape rim town) burned the houses of police and municipal officials. They burned tyres. They stoned police vehicles. They marched through the streets. They shot people with stolen firearms.

The people of Kwanokuthula were pissed off. They still are.

The reason for their anger is that the Bitou municipality, which has been ANC-controlled since 1994, is corrupt and the poor of the town are ignored. No services are forthcoming. Town councillors have been stealing money and living the high life since 1994 and the people want them dead.

Plettenberg Bay is one of South Africa's most rateable municipalities, with foreigners and rich locals owning monstrously large homes in what has become an overdeveloped nouveau Tuscan nightmare on the lagoon.

If there is no money for basic services in Plettenberg Bay, then what hope is there for any other municipality in South Africa?