Durban - With crime having gone through the roof in Umbilo, local business is tackling the scourge on two fronts.
On the one hand, the group has partnered with the city’s parks department to start transforming the once-rancid Congella Park into a recreational green lung, a food garden and an orderly recycling site to improve the lives of 12 former vagrants.
On the other, the Umbilo Business Forum has pooled resources to acquire a state-of-the-art patrol car.
“The idea is that if we make this a success, people in other areas will follow,” said Ian Campbell-Gillies, one of the people behind the initiative.
Among the plethora of business burglaries, especially in Williams Road, one intruder has become something of a regular, entering through the roof of Mike Pienaar’s electrical switchgear factory.
Pienaar said people like the “rooftop robber” were after copper wire, which made its way to businesses who bought it to recycle.
The Umbilo Business Forum is actively fighting crime in the area. Picture: Bongani Mbatha
They also regularly destroyed R10000 air-conditioner units, pulling them from exterior walls and then extracting copper wire from which they could only earn about R200. “Caged-in” air-conditioner units are becoming common.
Inside the buildings, even computers have had to be bolted down. “The issue is that someone is buying it as scrap,” said another business owner, Gavin Scott.
At Congella Park, the little green lung with natural springs - once used by King Shaka’s impis as well as Voortrekkers - the municipality has removed hundreds of vagrants.
Twelve remain as part of the Umbilo Business Forum initiative. They recycle rubbish in an orderly way, at specific locations rather than all over the park. The idea was to establish a proper yard for them, bringing them better profits through direct collection, cutting out the middleman,
Campbell-Gillies said.
eThekwini Municipality horticulturist Jenny Rampersad at work in Congella Park where she has taken former vagrants under her wing, teaching them how to grow vegetables and getting their recycling ventures done in a more orderly way. Picture: Bongani Mbatha
The 12 have also become urban agriculturists, tending to beds of carrots, tomato,
spinach, spring onion and parsley with municipality horticulturist Jenny Rampersad having taken them under her wing.
Umbilo Business Forum members have bought their fresh produce, and orders from a nearby restaurant increased demand.
Bongani Mkhize said he had come to Durban years ago from Pietermaritzburg in search of work but had been forced to search the streets for recycling material.
Campbell-Gillies said the plan was for the 12 to eventually afford rent and not need to live in the park.
Plans for the park are for the local Glenridge church to build an Aids health centre; to get the public toilets in order; to create more jobs by tapping the spring water resource; and to create an amphitheatre for stage productions, a running track and flea markets.