AYABONGA CAWE: Herman Mashaba and all that antipoor bull about hygiene
The mayor’s citizen’s arrest of an informal trader demonstrates how Johannesburg by-laws limit the space for citizens to create their own livelihoods
It’s the kind of story that would give animal rights activists and SPCA officials sleepless nights. They get a lot of those lately, when migrants like myself slaughter goats in our suburban backyards as a “connecting call” to our ancestors. In the inner city that afternoon, there were no voyeuristic neighbours to sound the alarm about any slaughtering. This time, the slaughtering had happened hours before the immigrant trader bought his wares from the butchery. The metro police official to the left of the former hair-product salesman didn’t know whether to shift his attention to his boss, who was relaying a point to his other colleague in a white shirt, or face the camera. The camera, standing ready to capture this moment of heroism by mayor Herman Mashaba, who had left his air-conditioned office to make a “citizen’s arrest” of a “citizen” who wasn’t really a “citizen”. But that’s beside the point. The trolley, an innovation of sorts — Pick n Pay trolley meets Californian skateboard...
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