GOOD Statement by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament:
The Western Cape Government wastes Billions of Rands on a meaningless Safety Plan instead of discharging its responsibilities to oversee the transformation of apartheid-imposed conditions of hopelessness on the Cape Flats, where a large proportion of the province’s citizens live.
The fact that the incidence of gun violence has continued to steeple necessitated the deployment of soldiers to back up police, who are backed up by the LEAP officers funded by the province.
More and better policing (and prosecuting) will undoubtedly be good, but, as the nursery rhyme taught, when something is fundamentally broken, “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” can’t just stitch it together again.
The fabric of Cape Flats communities is broken. It is a second-class place born of the trauma of forced removal, separation and denial of humanity – now increasingly overcrowded, overstretched and underserviced. It imposes a psychological weight on all who live there.
Until the daily lived experience of ordinary residents improves and becomes more dignified, young people will continue to be drawn to criminality as a means of overcoming the glass ceilings they feel, as well as the powerlessness, misery, and despair.
Western Cape Premier Alan Winde this week had his intended “walkabout” in Mitchell’s Plain interrupted by the news of another mass shooting in the area. Instead of walking about, he recorded a social media video to express his shock and blame gangsterism on the national government, which controls the South African Police.
“This is what life is like in Mitchell’s Plain,” Winde said, without appearing to realise that, as the Premier of a whole province, he has the power to make decisions to actually turn conditions around.
After World War Two, the allies quickly dismantled the ghettoes walled off by the Nazis because they were unhealthy, unjust and unsustainable. Rather than dismantling the ghettoes inherited from our past, Winde sees more effective policing as the path to a rosier future. It is an approach that is desperately lacking in intellect and imagination.
Gun violence in Cape Town has steadily increased, and we’ve seen zero response from the City or Province by way of a meaningful social strategy or meaningful community interventions.
Cape Flats residents, many of whom have historically backed Winde’s political party, must hold him and his party to account.
GOOD Social Cohesion: GOOD promotes social cohesion and unity among diverse communities.
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