{"id":9674,"date":"2013-08-27T05:39:41","date_gmt":"2013-08-27T05:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9674"},"modified":"2013-08-27T05:39:41","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T05:39:41","slug":"mk-veterans-trash-civic-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9674","title":{"rendered":"\u2018MK veterans\u2019 trash Civic building"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_9675\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9675\" style=\"width: 275px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/mkvets.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9675\" alt=\"MK Veterans\" src=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/mkvets.jpg\" width=\"275\" height=\"183\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9675\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">MK Veterans<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A group of people calling themselves military veterans trashed and looted the Germiston Civic Centre on Monday, the municipality said.<\/p>\n<div class=\"aticle_column\">\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cWe had a bunch of people masquerading as former MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe) members,\u201d said Ekurhuleni mayoral spokesman Zweli Dlamini.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cSurprisingly, some of them were in their mid-20s. They were not even born during times of the struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">The building accommodates the executive mayor, speaker, chief whip, staff and the other political parties.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">About 100 people stormed into the building, looted and vandalised property.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Dlamini said they trashed furniture, computers and fridges and stole some items.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cWe are still quantifying the damage. The thing is the building had just undergone refurbishment, so we are not sure exactly how much damage we are looking at,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">The attackers assaulted some staff members.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cSome staff members had to be taken in for counselling, while others were taken home,\u201d said Dlamini.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">It was unclear what the group wanted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cIf we knew what they wanted, we could have spoken to them, but they just stormed into the building,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThey did not even give us their demands.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Dlamini said about 60 people were arrested.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">They were expected to appear in court soon on charges of theft, vandalism, trespassing and assault.<\/p>\n<p class=\"arcticle_text\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Dlamini said officials were still operating from the vandalised building and that service delivery would not be hampered. &#8211; Sapa<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A group of people calling themselves military veterans trashed and looted the Germiston Civic Centre on Monday, the municipality said. \u201cWe had a bunch of people masquerading as former MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe) members,\u201d said Ekurhuleni mayoral spokesman Zweli Dlamini. \u201cSurprisingly, some of them were in their mid-20s. They were not even born during times &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9674\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;\u2018MK veterans\u2019 trash Civic building&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[3730,1427,3896,2964,4859],"class_list":["post-9674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-east-rand","tag-germiston","tag-mk","tag-umkhonto-we-sizwe","tag-veterans"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/mkvets.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9676,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674\/revisions\/9676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}