President Cyril Ramaphosa witnesses the signing of the Cooperation Agreement to Combat Crime during a ceremony at Erica Park Sports Ground in Belhar, Cape Town. Picture: Henk Kruger / Independent Newspapers
After Friday’s signing of the Western Cape Co-operations Agreement for Safety and Policing and the release of the latest crime statistics, we are left with an appalling sense that our politicians are being purely performative while being fully aware that vast parts of the Western Cape are living in conditions akin to Ciudad Barrios Prison in El Salvador.
The latest murder statistics show that of the 10 most dangerous places to live in South Africa seven are in the Western Cape.
If we expand that list to the 30 most dangerous places to live in South Africa, 11 are in the Western Cape.
A third of South Africa’s most dangerous residential areas are all in one province – the Western Cape. They are all traditionally black and coloured townships.
With more than 200 people murdered over the last five weeks in the Western Cape, the severity of inequality in the Western Cape is clear.
The media spin of safer Western Cape communities, the efficacy of the LEAP Programme, and the fallacy of better law enforcement are all coming crashing down.
The data informs us that the security cluster in the Western Cape has failed to have any impact on serious crime. The townships, under their watch, have become poverty and crime hell-holes.
What further aggravates this disturbing state of affairs is that traditional white suburbs don’t have any clue how horribly dangerous and utterly gruesome their neighbours’ existence in townships is.
Go to Nyanga and spend just 15 minutes driving through the area. Start at the police station. Then ask yourself why you have not seen these pictures anywhere when you read about the Western Cape. It is a hell-hole. Or go to Kreefgat in Netreg and walk the streets. Feel the chill that comes across your skin.
Adults and children, facing severe poverty, are being shot and stabbed daily, which in other societies would be regarded as a state of war.
In the June 2023 Western Cape Scopa Report, the Head of the Police Oversight and Community Safety Department stated, “LEAP officers have been permanently deployed in 13 high-crime areas, including murder stations.”
For a data-led province, this decision is correct. But something is wrong – because the latest data show that the deployments appear to have had a statistically insignificant effect.
The gruesomely violent and constant gang fights, drive-by shootings and murderous executions that happen in broad daylight and the constant stabbings and robberies are all daily occurrences in Western Cape townships.
Every resident lives in utter fear. Add to that the drugs and poverty and we have what should be safe residential communities, run as criminal empires.
Despite the media spin, the Western Cape is the most unsafe province in South Africa for poor people who live in townships.
To add insult to injury, the Western Cape government keeps blaming members of these communities for not reporting the gangsters and drug dealers. How absurd are they?
Do they have any clue at what cost that will happen? Do they know how many children or adults will be executed and homes burnt down, in retribution, when people report gangsters and drug dealers?
Why are the poor expected to carry the burden and risk of their safety and well-being? Why are our police not using intelligence sources that do not put people’s lives at risk?
The only conclusion one can come to is that the poor have been well and truly deceived into believing that the current government understands their fears and the conditions they live under. They do not.
They may be well-intentioned. But they don’t understand it. And nothing can fix that lack of understanding.
They will come with performative politics. But the data does not lie. They don’t know how to fix crime.
Like in Ciudad Barrios, crime is an economy. Until you can replace the value of that economy with a viable alternative, you cannot fix crime.
* Lorenzo A. Davids.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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