Every citizen has a role to play in helping to build safe communities, writes Murray Williams.
I am at my father's bedside, in hospital.
My cellphone rings. The screen says it is a call from Europe.
I answer. The caller asks after my Dad's health. I can hear how much he cares.
I recognise his name. I remember he once said my father taught him his single-most crucial wisdom, at UCT’s Graduate School of Business, many decades ago: “Learn how to ask the right questions.”
He went on to found one of the county's most famous companies. Almost half a century later, that wisdom has remained as powerful. I use this wisdom. I try to “ask the right questions”.
Q1: What is most important to us?
Answer: Our safety. Becoming safe and resilient citizens and communities.
Q2: What is our credo, to achieve this?
Answer: “Safety is everyone's responsibility.”
Q3: How can every one of us contribute towards our own safety?
Answer: By every single one of us understanding our roles. Such as:
Our role in identifying our immediate risks and dangers, harnessing our local knowledge, on every street.
Starting a “live relationship” with all our neighbours, as we live, work and play.
Our role as parents. In getting our kids safely to school, with “Walking Buses”, with the local authorities. With road engineers’ traffic-calming measures, in the right places. Our role on school governing bodies. Elevating our best parents on to those SGBs. For the best-possible school safety committees, the most coherent “school contingency plans”.
The role of our newly-elected ward councillors. Championing our safety needs in the municipalities.
Using their ward allocation budgets on our safety - like on radios, for our neighbourhood watches.
Our role in supporting “after school” programmes, to keep our kids off the streets - at our “MOD centres”, at our libraries, at our religious organisations’ programmes during the holidays.
Supporting volunteers at our victim support centres, with hot coffee and sandwiches on a Friday night. In protecting our life-saving ambulances.
Our role on our community police forums - crucial oversight over our local police, to help them be more responsive, relevant, proactive.
By asking the right questions, I reach the conclusion our “operating budget” for our safety is the combined contribution of every one of us.
The integrated roles of 5 million people in this province.
The final questions, then: “Who will take the lead? Who will be the activator, the enabler?
“Who will unite every single one of us, with a golden thread of common purpose?
“So we can own our collective safety?”
* Williams’ “Shooting from the Lip” column appears in the Cape Argus every Monday.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Cape Argus