City cracks down on pro-life activist over stickers

Throp says he will go to court rather than pay R2 500 fine

Cape Town pro-life activist Peter Throp has been served with a notice to pay a R2 500 fine for placing anti-abortion, Value Life stickers over illegal abortion advertisements in Belville.

He told Gateway News that he will not pay the fine but will rather go to court on November 12 to defend his actions. He said that the Metro law enforcement officers who issued him with the summons at 12 noon on Sunday (September 30) warned him that he would be arrested if he continued with his sticker campaign.

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The legal action against Throp follows a standoff between Throp and the City of Cape Town over the Value Life sticker campaign which the Christian pro-life group launched in June after removing illegal abortion stickers for two years only to see them replaced with more. Throp argued that the campaigners have a moral duty to take action to protect the community from evil in view of the local authority’s failure to do so. He sent an email to the Mayor of Cape Town, Patricia de Lille, urging her to understand and support the campaign. City officials responded by warning him that if he continued with the campaign he would be prosecuted for contravening the Outdoor Advertising and Signage bylaw. Throp said he would continue with the campaign and that they were not contravening the bylaw because they placed their stickers over illegal advertisements — not directly onto municipal property.

He said that it was evident on Sunday that illegal notices upon which his team painted identifying numbers on September 1, had not been removed by the local authority nearly a month later. He said he was served with the fine while placing stickers over newly posted abortion advertisements in Voortrekker Road, Belville.