The City of Cape Town has, on Friday, filed an appeal to a related High Court order to provide a venue for the minstrel organisation - The Cape Town Minstrel Carnival Association (CTMCA).
Earlier this week, the municipality lost a court battle
with the CTMCA for the use of Vygieskraal stadium. The City took the matter to
appeal but lost the matter late on Wednesday.
‘’The City has since formally offered to help the CTMCA
with Athlone stadium on available mid-week dates in January and a weekend in
February. This offer is, of course, subject to CTMCA duly complying with
applicable legislation, including those laws that regulate event permitting
process and doing business with the City,’’ said Luthando Tyliabongo, City
spokesperson.
‘’As early as September, the City informed the CTMCA that
there is not a single available stadium venue in the whole city during any of
the January weekends. They are all either already booked for Klopse events by
other associations, or are not suitable for medium-risk SASREA graded events.
SAPS applies this risk rating to all Minstrel events which limits the number of
suitable public or private venues,’’ he added.
‘’December-January is the busiest time of the year for
events, and bookings are made many months, even more than a year in advance for
many of these venues. It must be noted that the CTMCA did not act timeously to
secure a venue and meet permitting requirements, and instead waited three
months before filing an urgent application,’’ added Tyaliabongo.
COURTESY: Facebook - Focus Events MediaBush Radio News reached out to the CTMCA, who said the
dates provided by the City ‘’does not align with our original request.’’ The association
wants 1, 10, 17 and 24 January, but the City gave all Wednesday s and two days
in February.
‘’We applied for the facility. We were given dates for facilities
– Vygieskraal - We the deposit; We followed due process until, eventually, as
was the events office, requires to get a confirmation from the facility,
availability, and the dates which we did and hence that we got the the dates as
we applied for. And it's through, the Western Province Association, Athletics
Association, and mister Kumar and we made an agreement, and they assisted us
for acquiring the dates for January. We initially have the dates for December,
and we got the dates for January, which we had to pay another deposit. All in
all, we paid a deposit of for the facility of R20 000,’’ said Igshaan
Alexander, CTMCA Chairperson.
‘’Just on the Friday with the confirmation received and
paid and everything with due process, it was followed. We send it out to our
supporters and our teams. In addition, weacquired a field, and it was granted
to us, only to come Monday, it went without reason. Then we tried to engage,
and there was no response from the City. And when the area manager seen that
because it's through him that we negotiate the whole process. It was then
withdrawn. That is going to be the effort of, and the ways of, the City of Cape
Town to deny us a facility and all our participants in us, as community members
is our constitutional right to have facility to practice.
‘’Despite the City giving us dates, it is beyond logistic
wise. Three dates on a Wednesday, where people is in work, children going to
school. They cannot take off to do minstrel competition and go to stadium and there
is no people and no supporters as well. They give us those dates, and they say
they are engaging with us. It is very unrealistic. We also applied for 3
january. The other party applied for the fifth. They [The City] called us in, for
the first time in nine years, to say we must march with the Kaapse Klopse
Karnival Association (KKKA). We directly refused because they taking this away
from our people. This is a tradition and heritage route for a hundred years and
more. We declined and applied for 3 January. The City gave a list of
requirements and even though we did, it was declined without any reasoning and
there is an appeal process, which was also declined.
SUPPLIEDThe CTMCA said it would march with minstrel troupes on
Saturday to hand over a memorandum to express their dissatisfaction.
‘’We have an official permit from the events office of the
city of Cape Town. It is going to be peaceful with our participants and for the
people of Cape Town who wants to come and watch as they would have been doing
as an official event, road march,'' said
Done By: Mitchum George
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