Q: Won’t rates boycotts widen the inequality gap?
A: I’m not sure where you get that from because we have a lot of poorer people standing in solidarity with us.
Q: Don’t the majority of residents, who are poor, depend for the services they get on your rates and taxes?
A: That’s exactly the point. The rates and taxes the city collects are supposed to be used to subsidise the poor, but they’re not.
Q: Haven’t Constitutional Court judgments been against rates boycotts because local government can’t function for the good of all people if people like you withhold their taxes whenever they have a grievance?
A: Those precedents were set in relation to service delivery. We’re not arguing service delivery, we’re arguing the auditor-general’s reports of fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
Q: Fruitless and wasteful expenditure has everything to do with service delivery, doesn’t it?
A: We’re saying if you can curb fruitless and wasteful expenditure then service delivery, including for the poor, will improve. We’re not fighting just for Westville or middle class suburbs; we’re fighting for communities regarded as previously disadvantaged. Some of them haven’t even had water for the last three to five years.
Q: How’s that going to change for them if rich suburbs stop paying their rates?
A: We’re all for paying our rates, we’ve got no issue with that. That’s why we’re putting it into a fund. We’re saying we are willing to pay, but not pay to this city because they’re taking this money and having parties and other things instead of using it to improve the lives of the previously disadvantaged.
Q: Surely, however meagre services from the city are, they’re at least getting something they won’t get if everyone stops paying rates?
A: So what do you propose we do? Allow the country to slide into further degradation?
Q: Use the courts more aggressively?
A: As you mentioned there have been lots of instances where these matters were taken to court and they failed. It’s unfortunate that the courts side with municipalities and not with the residents.
Q: Wouldn’t using the polls with an election coming up next year lead to a more sustainable solution than withholding taxes?
A: There can never be a political solution to any of this. We have proportional representation, so it’s not to say you need to go and vote so the opposition is in the majority. Right now we have opposition parties sitting in exco and allowing all of these decisions to be taken. They sit in the subcommittees, they have access to the monthly reports. Surely, they should be interrogating these reports and making a lot of noise about it?
Q: Isn’t the point of democracy to use the vote to ensure they do?
A: You cannot tell me that the vote is going to change the situation. In 30 years we couldn’t change it, what makes you think you’ll change it in the next 30 years?
Q: What makes you think you’ll change it with a rates boycott?
A: We’re not saying we’ll be victorious but we’re willing to try. Either way we’ve highlighted a serious crisis in the way the cities are run and the country is being run.
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