Protecting Homestead Dam Park for Safe, Clean, and Family-Friendly Use

We, the undersigned residents of Benoni, urgently call for action regarding the ongoing Sunday church gatherings and food distributions at Homestead Dam Park in Ward 28 Benoni every Sunday as well as other religious ceremonies, baptisms, and activities. While these services may be well-intentioned, they have resulted in serious safety, sanitation, and environmental concerns that negatively impact the surrounding community and undermine the park’s purpose as a public recreational space.

Our Key Concerns

• Public Safety: Large groups of vagrants, some arriving under the influence of substances, gather from early morning, and often remain late into the evenings - or even sleep overnight in the park. Before and after the church services, many individuals loiter in the park and surrounding streets, harassing visitors and residents. Families, children, and other park users increasingly feel unsafe and have stopped visiting the park altogether.
• Hygiene & Sanitation Risks: The park has effectively become an open-air ablution facility, with people bathing, urinating, and defecating in public view. This is highly inappropriate and creates a significant health hazard and disturbing visual impact in a space meant for recreation.
• Litter & Environmental Degradation: The food distributions leave behind overflowing bins and rubbish, which residents must clean and transport to the municipal dump. This degrades the park’s natural beauty, environmental health, and usability. The impact of people bathing and washing clothes with harmful detergents is negatively impacting the water quality in the dam, inadvertently causing harm to aquatic life and people who use the dam for recreational activities like sailing and kayaking.
• Loss of Park Usability for the Ekurhuleni community and tourists: Many park visitors now avoid the park, especially on a Sunday due to these conditions, undermining the original purpose of this municipal space as a safe, clean, and family-friendly recreational area.

Our requests

1. Ekurhuleni Parks Department to put an immediate stop to the Church services until they have found a more suitable venue, that can better manage these activities without negatively impacting the park and the surrounding community.
2. EMPD to strictly enforce all municipal by-laws, to prevent harassment, public nuisance, camping, unauthorised events and damage to the environment as below:

Relevant By-laws:

Regulation of Parks and Open Spaces By-laws:

• 3(1). No person shall be present in the park outside the hours indicated on the notices currently erected in the park.
• 4. Personal Behaviour: In keeping with Chapter 2 of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, no person shall:
• 4(2) stay overnight in the park
• 4(4) deliver, utter or read aloud any public speech, prayer, book or address of any kind, or sing any song or hold or take part in any public meeting or assemblage.
• 5(10) No person shall bathe in any pond, fountain, lake, stream, river or ornamental water feature.
• 9(3) No person shall beg in the park
• 11 Camping: No person shall erect any structure in a park without the permission of the Council in terms of its tariffs. No camping overnight is permitted in a park.
• 15. Penalties:
  • (1) A person contravening a provision of these By-laws shall be guilty of an offence and be punishable on conviction by imprisonment for a period not exceeding 6 months, or to a fine not exceeding R 2000, 00 or to both such fine and imprisonment, and in the case of continuing offences, be liable to such fine or imprisonment for each such offence, or to both such fine and imprisonment.
  • (2) In addition to the fines mentioned in subsection
    • (1), a person convicted of a contravention of these By-Laws must compensate the Council for any loss or damage it may have incurred as a result of the contravention. The Council may institute a claim in the appropriate court for the amount of such loss or damage.
  • (3) The Council may refuse entrance to a park to a person who repeatedly contravened these By-Laws in which case the authorised official may forthwith remove such a person found in a park from the park notwithstanding the provisions of subsection 15(2).

Public Health By-Laws:

• Chapter 2: Public Health
  • Part 1: Public Health Principles
    • Sections 3(1), 3(2), 3(5), 3(6), 4.
  • Part 2: Public Health Hazard and Public Health Nuisances
    • Sections 5, 6, 7, 8.  
• Chapter 3: Potentially Hazardous Uses of Premises and Enforcement
  • Part 1: Potentially hazardous uses
    • Sections 9, 10, 16.  
• Chapter 6: Water
  • Section 37 – Pollution of sources of water supply and
  • Section 40 – Use of water from source other than the municipal supply

CALL TO ACTION

Although we support the rights of all groups to practice their religion and support the feeding of the needy, it must be done at an appropriate location, in a manner that strictly adheres to the municipal by-laws, is supervised by EMPD, and does not infringe on the rights, safety, and well-being of residents and park users.

By signing below, we affirm our support for this petition and request immediate action.

Homestead Helpers For Benoni NPO 304-528    Contact the author of the petition