Cape Town - The City’s mayoral urban regeneration programme teams have met with the Department of Community Safety in a bid to review the safety plan which was developed in 2018 for Gugulethu, one of the gang infested areas.
City spokesperson Luthando Tyhalibongo said the Nyanga/Gugulethu (Gunya) safety plan was expected to be reviewed and completed by next month.
Other safety planning processes were ongoing within the identified priority areas.
Tyhalibongo said it was planned that the Gunya safety plan report would be engaged with relevant stakeholders to simplify it, add any necessary information and transform it into an implementable plan.
“The advent of Covid-19 in the first quarter of 2020 delayed the completion of the Gunya safety planning process,” he said.
Community Safety MEC Albert Fritz said the establishment of the Area-Based Teams (ABTs) in identified areas was a major step forward in the provincial safety plan.
An ABT is a methodology established in a specific community aimed at maximising collective impact in realising the core imperative of the provincial safety plan, which has been to reduce the murder rate by 50% by 2029.
Fritz said the safety plan aims to do that by integrating law enforcement, violence prevention and urban design into targeted, focused interventions which were based on data and evidence.
ANC provincial spokesperson for community safety, Mesuli Kama, said the biggest challenge was that of environmental design which particularly in poor working class communities and the municipalities needed to respond to that challenge.
“We need to see the City and the provincial government starting to address the challenge of lack of street lights and CCTV cameras, especially the critical issue of accessibility in our informal settlements.
“All these issues need to form part of the safety plan,” said Kama.
SA National Civic Organisation (Sanco) provincial chairperson Bongikhaya Qhama said they believed that the City has to create an enabling environment that puts community safety initiative at the centre.
Qhama said for too long the City has been using erroneous lenses that seek to undermine community intelligence, of which, there has been no serious resolve to support and empower people.
sisonke.mlamla@inl.co.za