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The Western Cape is reeling after a blood-soaked week of mass killings, with police scrambling to come up with a game plan while communities cry foul over rising gun violence and political inertia.
Police Minister Senzo Mchunu said via IOL that after seven men were executed at a home in the Kanana informal settlement in Gugulethu, calling the carnage what it is: a crisis.
“There is no doubt that the Cape Flats in Cape Town have indeed become the killing fields of the Western Cape, with the latest shooting of 7 people in Gugulethu.
What the Police Ministry and Police Top Management must refuse to do is to treat this as a normal trend and keep the normal methods of policing in place,” Mchunu said.
He wasn’t only rattled by the Gugulethu massacre. The discovery of three bodies in Samora Machel and a Nyanga shooting that left three alleged hijackers dead added fuel to a fire that’s already engulfed communities for far too long.
Cape Flats Safety Forum chair Abie Isaacs said residents have had enough, and want more than talk—they want action.
“We’ve consistently been calling for a special probe into gun violence, specifically that has been prevalent in and around the Cape Flats. We’ve also been consistent and will continue to lobby for the South African National Defence Force as a force multiplier to the police.
“Once the areas are stabilised and normalised, then it also gives time for the agencies to go back to the drawing board and not have conventional policing in an unconventional environment, because this is clearly what’s happening.”
Translation: throwing routine patrols at this warzone isn’t going to cut it. Isaacs read Mchunu’s statement for what it really is—a long-overdue admission that the wheels have fallen off.
“And I think he further says that we need to develop a new strategy to deal with the continuous gun violence that’s prevalent in and around the Cape Flats. That is my interpretation… We’ve been saying that you cannot have conventional policing in an unconventional environment.
“And again, gun violence is one of the common denominators. That’s the main reason why we need this.”
And if you’re wondering what’s standing in the way of progress, Isaacs points squarely at a lack of both political guts and strategic brains.
“There’s no political will in this province to deal with what we call urban terror gang violence in and around the Cape Flats.
“There are two schools of theory: either bringing the army, or not bringing the army. We hold the view that the army is the best people now to come in to stabilise, to assist the police, to stabilise those areas, while in the same vein allowing the police to develop a new strategy.”
Meanwhile, Dr Guy Lamb of Stellenbosch University is basically waving a giant “I told you so” flag, saying SAPS is stuck in the 80s. “The typical strategy is the day-to-day policing with policing patrols, and then when crime starts to escalate, they do these high-density operations, like Operation Shanela. But they’ve been doing this since the 80s.”
He pointed out that when police actually seized more illegal firearms—from the late 90s to 2010—violent crime dipped. But then came the backslide.
“We saw it happening from the late 90s to about 2010, and then crime goes up again… a lot of the crime upswing we’ve seen since 2011 has been largely due to availability of firearms.”
In other words: you want less bloodshed? Get the guns off the streets. And stop playing whack-a-mole with symptoms instead of treating the disease.
“The kind of approach that police have with crime combating, and declaring war on crime, can only take you so far, because you’re really just dealing with the symptoms of it. You’re not dealing with the causes.”
On the ground, things are no less hectic. Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, JP Smith, confirmed the recovery of a loaded assault rifle in Gugulethu this past weekend—because yes, assault rifles are now part of the local toolkit.
“The kind of firepower in the hands of criminals is of grave concern. The use of assault rifles is becoming far too commonplace in Cape Town, but also elsewhere in the country. We simply need to stem the flow of guns onto our streets and into the wrong hands, and the City is ready to step up and play a bigger role if given more policing power,” said Smith.
Cape Town isn’t just bleeding, it’s bleeding out. And unless national and provincial powers stop flailing and start fighting smart, the body count will keep climbing.
[Source: IOL]