by Rozario Brown
Allow me to commence by expressing my sincere condolences to the families of those innocent victims of the recent gang attacks in Mitchell’s Plain and elsewhere on the Cape Flats.
Allow me to further state that the blood of these innocent people is on the hands of those politicians who promised to take care of our people but once elected into political office completely forgot about them and their families.
The senseless killing of innocent children cannot simply be dismissed as “gang-related incidents”. These are terror attacks at the hands of urban terrorists and should be dealt with accordingly.
These cold-blooded killers are killing our people indiscriminately, including police officers, law enforcement officers, traffic officers and others expected to protect our citizens.
These attacks are well-orchestrated and it wouldn’t surprise me if the same culprits were sitting behind most of these attacks.
A sensible and caring government would immediately unleash its full might against such criminals. These attacks should be considered attacks against the state and must be treated like any other terror attack would be treated.
How on earth do we allow these gangsters and drug lords to operate with such impunity in a country where we have regular elections and well-paid elected officials who should be responsible for ensuring that our people, especially the most vulnerable women and children, are being kept safe from these types of attacks?
How do we continue justifying knowing exactly who these gangsters are, where they live and from where they are selling their narcotics for decades and with no will to shut them down?
With such high levels of violent crime, especially murders and incidents of rape, one would have expected that every police station should have a complete chart detailing every known drug house, prominent gang members and other high-profile criminals.
It has become a normal occurrence for police officers, some high-ranking, to be seen in the presence of known high-flyers and very few people dare to question this.
It is clear as daylight that our people living on the Cape Flats – especially areas like Mitchell’s Plain, Hanover Park, Manenberg, Elsies River, Kraaifontein, Lavender Hill, Atlantis and other so-called coloured communities, are on their own.
They can no longer depend on the government to provide them with the safety and security they need. In situations like these, what exactly should our people be doing to protect themselves against these heavily armed criminals operating like militias and executing our people with absolute impunity?
At the least, we should be doing all in our power to ensure that these coldblooded killers are tracked by the law enforcement agencies and not a single terrorist is allowed to escape the long arm of the law ever again.
First, I call on the City and the provincial and national governments to address these issues immediately and make our people’s safety a priority.
At the least, the government should divert funds from other projects and immediately install high-quality surveillance cameras with motor vehicle number plate recognition capabilities.
Second, I propose that the SAPS immediately bring back mobile police stations in the most severely affected gang hot spots and adequately resource them to deal with any eventualities.
Third, law enforcement agencies should hit these cowards where it hurts most. Have regular searches at all known drug houses across the Cape Flats. Do this on a daily basis and frustrate them until they move out of the areas.
The authorities should also be targeting all those pharmacies selling prescription drugs to our youth without prescriptions and over the counter. These pharmacists are worse than the drug dealers on the streets, because they have been sworn to protect our people.
Finally, I call upon the community to report these well-known criminals, drug dealers and gang members, within the community to the police, to the SA Revenue Service and other agencies to rid our community of these scoundrels.
More importantly, vote out all these inactive and silent councillors who remain missing in action when our people are under attack.
Demand that political parties remove MPs and MPLs for doing absolutely nothing, especially when our children are being mowed down. The only possible and logical reason these elected officials would remain silent is because they are on the take and on good terms with the criminals.
These crimes can no longer be considered gang-related, they are politically motivated. An attack on an innocent child or a police officer must be treated like an attack on the state. It deserves the highest level of state intervention possible.
We demand that the state issue massive financial rewards to the public for credible information, which could lead to the arrest and conviction of these terrorists.
* Brown is an community activist from Mitchells Plain.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
Cape Argus
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