Informal traders in Marabastad want incumbent mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa to honour promises made to them.
They took to the streets on Tuesday to highlight their plight.
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The traders claim they had been in talks with Ramokgopa, who promised to build them proper shelters, ablution facilities and hire security personnel as crime was rife.
“We were made fools by the mayor when he promised that our needs would be taken taken of,” said protest organiser David Mathekga.
Mathekga said they had been selling at the Marabastad business area for many years now, but their concerns had fallen on deaf ears.
EFF‘s councillor candidate in Tshwane Joyce Diope said the EFF and the ANC in the Tshwane region were in full support of the traders as their concerns were genuine.
“There were a lot of things the mayor had promised the traders but had failed to deliver on.”
Diope said the traders were parents who had children and families to feed.
“I don’t understand why the mayor would not do what is right for us. We are old women (and men) who depend on selling and it seems the mayor and the chairperson are taking us for fools,” said gogo Eunice Mahlobo, from Mamelodi.
Gogo Mahlobo said the area in which they trade had no water, shelter or ablution facilities.
“Our customers avoid us as the area we cook and sell from has a bad odour caused by those who urinate as there are no toilets nearby.”
He said Shoes Maleka, chairperson of the Tshwane Informal Traders’ Forum, also known as the Tshwane Barekisi Forum, was to be blamed for the lack of response from the mayor.
The traders marched from Marabastad to the city centre to hand over a memorandum to Maleka.
This is the same memorandum they had given to the mayor last year, which Ramokgopa promised he would urgently respond to.
Maleka however, refused to meet with the aggrieved protesters and called police officers to guard him.
“Maleka called us (police) to come and guard him as he feared for his life,” said a policeman who did not want to be named.
The protesters said the mayor had promised to build them shelters, ablution facilities and install water, but they had been trading in these conditions for years.
The traders had also been promised funding by the department of trade and industry which, they say, they are still waiting for.
Both the mayor and the chairperson of the traders forum could not be reached for comment by time of going to print.
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