Zukile Ntentema, a student at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and a community organiser, has started the process of opening the nation's first facility dedicated to preventing youth violence.
This case study of a crime-fighting initiative that was successfully implemented in the Global North will be housed at UCT, and it will help the government, law enforcement organisations, and civil society effectively monitor crime trends in the Mother City and inform fresh, youth-focused crime prevention strategies.
According to Mossman Youth Services, a youth centre is a building created to offer an indoor and outdoor place, especially for young people to meet up with friends. Young people use the facility to socialise in a welcoming and safe setting through organised and unorganised arts, cultural, and sporting activities, as well as access to a range of services and programmes.
Regardless of their current situation, family members, including extended family and other kinship relationships, will be the most persistent attachments in the lives of the majority of young people. It's crucial to understand that not all families provide a secure environment for children to live in, but with the right interventions, this can frequently change.
Additionally, many families are not dangerous; rather, they are doing the best they can under challenging circumstances and may require assistance to provide for the young person's needs. A durable and efficient method of helping young people is to support the family in supporting the young person.
The centre will provide evidence-based, Afrocentric methods and interventions with the aid of volunteers to reduce crime and make the city a safer place. Ntentema has already spoken with Interim Vice-Chancellor Emeritus Professor Daya Reddy about his plan, and Reddy has given him the go-ahead to begin talks about establishing the centre at UCT.
Professor Elelwani Ramugondo, the university's Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Transformation, Student Affairs, and Social Responsiveness, has also promised to assist him throughout the program's various phases.
In our nation, crime is a huge problem that affects adolescents living in disadvantaged communities in a variety of ways. It's not simply up to the government to solve everything; we also have a duty to help out where we can.
According to Ntentema, opening this centre is one method to engage various facets of society and, through their cooperation, bring about the change that our community so sorely needs.
The centre's main tasks include tracking metropole crime rates, determining whether and when new incidents are likely to happen, and creating customised crime-prevention plans for young people living in risky neighbourhoods on the Cape Flats.
In order to successfully carry out this purpose and combat the criminal pandemic, Ntentema noted that the centre would collaborate with non-governmental organisations, community policing forums, and other stakeholders working in hard-hit communities.
To combat crime in South Africa, we must present a unified front. Because everyone has a role to play, the crime prevention centre will rely on the experience of law enforcement, the government, and civil society.
We will examine the existing crime-prevention strategies, determine what works and what doesn't, and jointly develop fresh concepts for securing our neighbourhoods, added Ntentema.
The centre will serve as a place where volunteers may cooperate specifically to develop empirical Afrocentric methods to reduce crime, share tools and ideas, and track their advancement in the effort to create safer neighbourhoods, according to Ntentema. He clarified that Afrocentric interventions give special attention to African values, experiences, and traditions.
A vital first step in reducing crime among young people is to develop Afrocentric methods that can deal with violent crime and act as a resource for the government and other stakeholders. Because crime is on the rise, we also need to stop adopting the unproductive, Eurocentric strategies we have been employing, according to Ntentema.
The challenging process starts after receiving Reddy and Ramugondo’s assistance. In order to launch the centre, Ntentema will now collaborate with other UCT professors that specialise in the topic of violence prevention as well as undergraduate and graduate students. He added that he also intended to solicit participation in the project from academics and students at other universities.
Ntentema is certain that opening the centre will be a crucial step in the fight against crime in the city, and he has already teamed up with the youth desk of the South African Police Services, the Western Cape Government, and the City of Cape Town to enlist their support.
When we are operating, we wish to work toward developing interventions for preventing violence that have undergone thorough evaluation to inform next public policies. Several American colleges, notably Harvard and Johns Hopkins University, already have centres like this one operating successfully. It's quite exciting that ours will be a first for South Africa, and I'm sure it will make the change we need, he added.
Today's youth are important because they represent our future. Never before has the issue of youth been so prominent in the media, both favourably and unfavourably. Never before have young people themselves had access to as much space or resources to express their problems, interests, and goals. But before all young people reach their full potential, more needs to be done.