by Albert Fritz
Two weeks ago, I was alerted to the cruel and senseless murder of Jordan Moore (16) in Atlantis. He had been stabbed, mauled by the gangsters’ dogs and reportedly had a chain around his neck.
The murder is truly horrifying and is but one example of the epidemic of violence that has gripped our province. No matter how many arrests, and no matter how many persons are put behind bars, we still face a situation in which over 3000 people are killed, each year, in our province.
Our aim, through the Western Cape Safety Plan, is to halve the murder rate over the next ten years.
In order to do so, we need to address our province’s violence epidemic. This requires, firstly, understanding what causes such violent acts to be perpetrated and secondly, putting a range of solutions in place.
We are taking a public health approach to violence prevention. This is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as seeking to improve the health and safety of all individuals by addressing underlying risk factors that increase the likelihood of someone becoming a victim or a perpetrator of violence.
This approach consists of four steps: To define the problem; to establish why violence occurs; to find out what works to prevent violence; to implement effective and promising interventions in a wide range of settings.
Our starting point has been to analyse the types of violence frequently reported. While gangsterism is a significant contributor, most murders and violent crimes stem from interpersonal violence. For this reason, we have focused the Safety Plan on gender-based violence, child safety, school safety, and creating safe spaces.
Putting in place a range of protective factors against violence is our best defence.
We must work with young people to ensure that they can access opportunities and are steered away from violence, and possible gang involvement, and we must do so throughout the course of their life. This requires ensuring a healthy pregnancy, safe childbirth, healthy development, school readiness, school achievement, ensuring thriving adolescence, employment and healthy ageing.
It means working together with all stakeholders including parents, schools, NGOs, faith-based organisations and local government.
Our work on the ground has begun, with the monitoring of hotspot areas for key risk factors, including:
Societal risks: social change, economic inequality, norms that support violence and the availability of firearms;
Community-based risks: high crime levels, local illicit drug trade and inadequate victim support;
Relational risks: poor parenting, early and forced marriage and friends engaging in violence; and
Individual risks: sex, age, education and disability.
We are currently developing five Area Based Teams (ABTs) situated in Delft, Nyanga, Khayelitsha, Bishop Lavis, and Hanover Park.
The additional law enforcement officers funded through the Safety Plan will assist police within these ABTs by acting as force-multipliers. To date, we have already deployed 500 recruits.
I am pleased that the Department will be appointing an additional 1000 safety ambassadors.
A further initiative that we, together with Chrysalis Academy, have recently piloted is the Matric Camp, which aims to give vulnerable students a safe space to prepare for their exams. In total, 60 grade 12 learners from schools in Hanover Park were selected.
We must rid our society of violence if we are to improve our economy, restore dignity to citizens and improve our safety all-round. While my Department drives these initiatives, I call on you, as a member of a community, family or workplace to stand against violence.
That means reporting violent behaviour and crime to the police, helping when you see signs of violence in your family or community such as child and woman abuse, teaching young people conflict management skills, assisting or seeking assistance with domestic violence, and getting help if needed on conflict and anger management.
Western Cape residents have come together before when we have faced challenges, and we must come together now to face our violence epidemic. Together, we can end violence.
* Fritz is Community Safety MEC.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Cape Argus
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