Kya Sand Service Delivery

Residents of Kya Sands blocked Malibongwe Drive as well as other surrounding streets in Johannesburg on Yesterday morning in a Service delivery Protest where they demanded Housing and better service delivery. They started gathering at about 05:00 the morning and they kept Malibongwe drive closed to traffic until 14:00 in the afternoon.

It was one of those protests again. with me arriving just after all the action. I picked up on the service delivery just at about 6:30 and was in my car by 7:00 but with Malibongwe blocked up with traffic it was a nightmare getting there. I only arrived just before 8:00 on the scene. They crowd was calm except for some individuals throwing stones at people who wanted walk past them and go to work.

The protesters occupied the road the whole day and only dispersed after the MMc of housing came to talk to them, needles to say the crowd was not happy with what they heard but they cleared the road and made there way back to their homes with the Police bringing up the rear. As soon as they got back to the squatter camp they started to block the entrance again and set fire to some wooden crates. Some of the residents also started throwing stones at the police. The cops handled the situation very well and did not try to provoke the angry residents. They fired two canisters of teargas to disperse the crowd and we started to make our way back to Malibongwe drive. This was then that the wind carried some of the teargas back to us and the burn started. Our eyes, noses and throats were on fire and even my forehead and eyelids were burning, and this from only a little bit of teargas. I don't even want to imagine what it must feel like to be hit by the full force of teargas. But yeah so it ended, a whole days wait for 5 minutes worth of action, still worth it. That is also why I did so many shots of the flag, ok I was getting bored and there wasn't really much else to photograph.