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It has been over a month since a group of residents in Sea Point started a rates boycott, withholding 50% of their property rates payments.

They vowed to keep this up until the City of Cape Town gave in to their demands.

The Concerned Residents of Atlantic Seaboard, as they call themselves, claim that the City has been neglecting the area, allowing it to become a space for violence against residents, among other social misdemeanours.

This is, as it always is in South Africa, a complicated issue that would involve more than a few moving parts to rectify.

In the interim, the City has had enough, IOL reports.

Authorities have cut off the boycotting ratepayers’ water and deducted outstanding rates from prepaid electricity purchases.

Over to group leader Paul Jacobson, whom you might remember as one of the residents caught up in the Sea Point car torching incident that made huge waves back in May.

“Without due notification, they have stopped the supply of water to certain homes. They have deducted monies owed on rates from prepaid electricity,” said Jacobson. He said residents were not only struggling to keep up with the rates, but were faced with increases.

“No matter the circumstances, whether one has been affected by the hardships of lockdown or withholding rates purposely until they supply the services, the City has been ruthless, insensitive and unreasonable.

He claims that rates have increased by 4%, even though property values have plummeted.

Lance Cohen, who has participated in the boycott, says that the City cut off the water to one of the homes he had been renting out.

“One of the issues I had a problem with is how the City conducted its property valuations. Because to me it seems that they have thumb-sucked and increased the property values between 25%-75%.

The City’s chief financial officer, Kevin Jacoby, responded with:

“The City’s Credit Control and Debt Collection Policy is implemented across the board and all due process is followed, including various warnings. We are at the coalface of our communities and we witness the impact of the dire South African economic situation on our residents and businesses.”

Jacoby argues that the City has the law on its side.

I guess it’s now a matter of who caves first – residents without water, and rapidly diminishing prepaid electricity balances, or the City.

[source:iol]