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The South African Communist Party (SACP) Gauteng Province calls for the urgent removal of City of Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba for harassing the poor and the working class who are victims of building hijacking in the Central Business District.

This week Mashaba displayed his poor understanding and absolute ignorance of his role as a Mayor of the City by subjecting poor people who live in hijacked buildings to unnecessary harassment and arrests for occupying buildings that are hijacked by organised syndicates.

His attention-seeking charade has proven yet again that Mashaba lacks the basic requirements that should be expected from someone who occupies an important position of Mayor, especially in such a complex Metro Municipality.

Instead of conducting thorough investigations into the real criminals who have stolen buildings in the City Centre, Mashaba in his true ignorant style targeted the most vulnerable residents of Johannesburg. In his desperate rush to grab headlines and prop up his publicity, Mashaba conducted a raid under the guise of collecting revenue from businesses that apparently owe the City and ended up arresting innocent people.

The SACP has always maintained that dealing with illegal occupation of buildings in Johannesburg will need the municipality to trace the real culprits, who are building hijacking syndicates and absent landlords. We have also maintained that targeting the people who merely pay rent to these unscrupulous criminals does not bring us any closer to solving the problem.

But in his true signature style the Mayor has decided to go on a witch-hunt, which would victimise the same people who desperately need proper housing. This is an easy way for Mashaba to score cheap publicity points.

We remain convinced that the working class is now seeing the true colours of the EFF who remain in an unholy marriage with the anti-working class DA. It is the very same EFF that sold the working class vote to the DA. Mashaba was eventually forced down the throats of residents of Johannesburg thanks to the EFF.

We call on the City of Joburg to stop the attention seeking antics displayed by a clearly clueless Mashaba. We further call on the City of Joburg to arrest the real perpetrators and parasites who continue feeding on the poor and the working class.

Mashaba continues to prove that he is not suitable to lead the country’s industrial hub and he must step down with immediate effect. We call on him and the DA-EFF administration to stop the victimisation of people who are already victims of building hijackers and unscrupulous landlords.

Mashaba is a huge embarrassment to the residents of Joburg and has outlived his usefulness, in case there was any.

Issued by the SACP Gauteng province