Protests an opportunity to listen to plight of poor

I STOOD at the Seaview Spar waiting for the machine to print my prepaid electricity slip and it didn't seem to want to budge.

For a moment, I panicked and asked myself: "What will I do if the machine is broken and I cannot purchase electricity?"

And then I remembered Leigh Denny's letter to The Herald ("Take protest to City Hall", February 4 2014) and my life was instantly put into perspective.

Denny wrote an angry and hateful letter complaining about hers and my neighbours – the residents of what she terms the "informal settlements".

These areas are called New Rest and Zwelidinga. These areas have no electricity, ever.

Denny made the following statement (among others): "Some Seaview residents live in the area legally and pay rates and taxes; others disrupt our lives and should move out."

Denny, perhaps you don't know that all South Africans pay taxes – some in the form of what you refer to and all in the form of VAT – every time a person purchases an item from a shop, s/he is paying tax.

People migrate (globally) in order to find work (the right to work being enshrined in our constitution) and as a result, informal settlements emerge, even though our constitution guarantees everyone the right to have access to adequate housing.

The New Rest and Zwelidinga residents were promised houses to replace the shacks which, I'm sure, you (like the residents and myself), would not like to live in.

The residents have been waiting patiently for a very long time for these houses and were told the other day that the budget has been cut and the houses will not be built. I think I'd protest for that too.

Denny, you also claim you "did not vote in the current powers" so you do not know what the lack of service delivery has to do with you. The almost daily service delivery protests are about people's basic human rights – they have tried every avenue possible – tried and failed – and so their last resort is to express their built-up frustrations and invite all of us to listen and to support their plight.

Taking to the streets has become the only way to be heard.

I urge you and others who may share your views, to consider the "rioting" (as you referred to it) through another lens and try to understand why it happened and why it is increasingly happening, not only in South Africa, but globally.

Perhaps, if another protest happens, Denny, you should simply turn around and take the other road out of Seaview. Or you could stop and give protestors a lift to the City Hall where you advised them to go.

Britt Baatjes, Seaview