Good party secretary-general Brett Herron has accused the Cape Town metro of abandoning the Cape Flats.
The politician was speaking to Sunday World in the aftermath of the recent mass killings in the area largely populated by black and coloured residents of the city.
A week ago, seven people were gunned down in Gugulethu, while five were killed and seven injured in shooting incidents in Mitchells Plain on Thursday, July 3.
Herron said: “The people of Mitchells Plain, Gugulethu, Samora Machel, Philippi, Lwandle and Khayelitsha deserve more than condolences; they deserve real change. Until that comes, gang violence will remain the bloody proof of our government’s failure.
“In the first three months of this year, 902 people were murdered in the metro, and 197 of them in gang-related killings.
“These crimes are symptoms of a deliberate failure to confront the spatial and socio-economic injustice that defines life on the Cape Flats as well as the
deliberate abandonment of the Cape Flats.
“Residents in these areas live in a city where opportunities are walled off by poverty, geography, and decades of broken promises.
“The DA-led city continues to entrench these divisions through a new planning policy that doubles down on apartheid spatial design.”
Herron said the city needed to saturate high-crime zones with metro police officers.
“The city’s approach of spreading officers equally across wards is politically convenient but
completely out of touch with the realities on the ground,” he said, adding that the city needed to implement violence prevention programmes such as community-based conflict mediation, school-based interventions and localised social support.
“These are proven tools in successful anti-gang strategies, but they remain underfunded.”
City of Cape Town MMC for Safety and Security Alderman JP Smith said that while crime prevention was the mandate of the SAPS, the city supported their effort.
“We have proven our willingness to work side by side [with the SAPS] and to bring as much to the table as our budget and resources will allow,” he said.
He added that the city had consistently increased its budget and resourced its enforcement agencies over time to help meet the growing demand in many communities hit by gang violence.
He said in August last year, the city had signed a cooperation agreement with the SAPS, which, while still in its infancy, was starting to reap rewards.
“We look forward to seeing how much more can be achieved in terms of creating safer communities.”
He added that it was a fallacy that Cape Town metro police officers received inadequate firearm training.
“For the record, our officers receive exactly the same accredited firearm training as SAPS officers,” he said.
“In total, law enforcement officers undergo training amounting to six months, which includes both theoretical and supervised practical training.”
