GOOD Statement by Brett Herron ,
GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament
19 November 2024
Another day on the Cape Flats, another child shot dead in the street, another promise by officials to deploy extra police for a few days… and then another child is shot dead in the street.
That’s the “normal” rhythm of life for hundreds of thousands of Capetonians. Instead of implementing programmes to develop young peoples’ abilities to improve their lives and escape apartheid-created ghettoes, the post-apartheid government spends Billions of Rands on law-enforcement – while leaving the people to stew.
After the killing in Ravensmead this morning, just before school, the gunmen were seen running through the St Andrews school grounds. Schools in the area were placed under lockdown. Learners were sent home, besides matriculants, who wrote their exams as strong security contingents patrolled outside. The opposite of conducive to getting good marks.
The vast majority of people on the Cape Flats don’t want to live in a gangster state, which does not imply they want to live in a police state, either. What most parents want, more than anything – in common with just about all parents, everywhere – is for their children to have the opportunity to live better lives than they have.
Next year, the Western Cape Government is scrapping 2,400 teachers’ posts. Among the reasons it is doing so is because it chooses to spend money on law enforcement.
The City of Cape Town has an army of LEAP officers, which make for excellent PR opportunities for the politicians, in their shiny boots, but has had zero percent impact on quarterly crime statistics.
The GOOD Party calls on the Western Cape Provincial Government to publicly review its Safety Plan and LEAP, undertake an honest cost-benefit analysis, and convene a crime summit at which people living on the Cape Flats can share their daily lived experiences.
Participants in the crime summit must include social workers, psychologists, teachers, business owners, members of communities – and police.
The outcome of the summit must be a real and implementable battle-plan to address issues of under-development, and the development of safer, and nicer, environments.
If we want to reduce crime, we’ve got to interrupt the pattern. To interrupt the pattern, we’ve got to stop accepting that the conditions in which many people live, in which many feel they have nothing to lose, are by any means normal.
Media enquiries: media@forgood.org.za