Scores of people were bundled into police vans on Friday when police forcibly prevented organisations from setting up a planned three-day summit on Jobs, Land and Housing on Rondebosch Common as a means of highlighting inequality in South African society. Organisations included Passop, Proudly Mannenberg, Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign, the South African NGO Coalition and the South African Council of Churches. Determination to reclaim the common as a public area nonetheless led to clashes with police who sprayed water cannons loaded with blue dye at the demonstrators, a move reminiscent of apartheid police spraying purple dye on protestors marching to Parliament on September 2, 1989. Rihanna Marthinus, 57, a participant from Mannenberg, said the city had been promising to improve services in Mannenberg for years but nothing was being done.