Cape Town - Shootings between rival gangs in Ocean View have become a spectator sport.
This is how ward 61 councillor Simon Liell-Cock described the crime situation in the suburb.
“I want to emphasise that Ocean View is a lovely place, full of God-fearing, law-abiding, hard-working people currently held hostage by a handful of gangsters, and we cannot accept this.
“The current crime wave in Ocean View is directly linked to the drug trade and drug abuse. Shootings occur between rival gangs seeking to expand their control of the drug trade,” Liell-Cock said.
Liell-Cock added he had witnessed a rival gang shooting outside his office at around 3pm.
“Shootings take place at any time of the day or night.
“Murders are carried out by gang members on other gang members and frequently result in innocent bystanders being wounded or killed. Poaching of crayfish and perlemoen is also linked to the drug trade,” he said.
Adding that the spike in shootings is linked to the release of known gangsters from jail, Liell-Cock said muggings, house break-ins, vandalism and destruction of infrastructure are carried out by drug addicts in search of money to support their habits. This occurs in the morning and late afternoon when people are on their way to work or school or on their way home.
Concerned Ocean View resident, Sharone Daniels said the situation in which community members have to live in was a very sad.
“We tried to stop the crime years ago - between 2014 and 2015. Other concerned community members and I marched to the police station to hand over a memorandum, yet the crime still escalated,” Daniels said.
Ocean View was formed in the late 1960s to 1970s during the Group Areas Act. Coloured people were forcefully relocated from white communities in Simon’s Town, Fish Hoek, and Noordhoek.
Daniels said that caused internalised trauma for the people in the community. “Issues like not having something to eat, being treated badly by the system and society, lead to some of the issues we now face here,” Daniels said.
“Innocent children were getting hurt, it pained us as mothers and fathers, these issues of crime needed to be addressed. It’s been quiet for a few weeks now, since a second march held earlier this year, but we cannot be too relaxed, every bang we hear, we jump.”
Kathy Cronje, Ocean View’s Community Policing Forum (CPF) chairperson, said a second memorandum was handed over to the station commander of Ocean View SAPS and the police have since stepped up, and the number of murders has decreased significantly. Several arrests were made and about nine unlicensed firearms were confiscated. Liell-Cock said the City of Cape Town was working with the CPF, SAPS and the provincial government on a safety plan for Ocean View.
This includes implementing a CCTV network, dedicated law enforcement officers and various
social projects