WAARHEID! Official Newspaper of the GOOD Party Vol 11 March 2021 Free Copy To fix violence we must fix communities BY PATRICIA DE LILLE If we are to fix South Africa we need to stem the tide of This is what the Council thinks of Bontas… violence. Violence that is committed in our homes and on the streets. Gender-based violence. Gang-related violence. Violence committed by security force members meant to uphold the peace. On the last weekend in February, six people were shot dead in Mitchell’s Plain. In March, Human Rights month, Hanover Park families kept their children indoors as gangsters ran amok. Victims of this violence included a 14-year-old boy. Another 14-year-old narrowly escaped with his life. In Johannesburg, police fired rubber bullets at protesting students, killing a passer-by. If we are going to stem the tide of violence in our society we need to shift our thinking away from the idea that the only tool to fix it are more and better-trained police. If we are going to stem the violence we must develop our self- respect and respect for others. We need to stop talking about social interventions and actually fund and implement them. We need to stop funding gimmicks such as the shotstopper technology introduced by the City of Cape Town at great expense that enabled the city to listen in to gunfire but had no impact on stopping violence. We need to use our resources better, including our community resources. We need more social workers, more drug A historic school in Bonteheuwel tucked behind a garbage dump. The school is fenced, but the dump is open to rehabilitation programmes, more recreational facilities for neighbourhood children. See Page 2 for a special feature on the historic Cape Town township. young people, more academic support for children struggling at school, and much more support for community-based organisations and interventions. aren’t daily shattered by a random bullet, or the violence of But we can immediately begin gathering the necessary mere survival on the poverty side of the tracks in one of the ingredients to meet the challenge sustainably. We can We need all spheres of government, but particularly local most unequal countries in the world. immediately begin revising budget planning by setting the government, to finally abandon the apartheid level of There is no place for violence in a society built on a community development goals and targets we must meet. maintaining our townships and ghettoes and recognise the foundation of justice for all: Social justice, economic justice, We can immediately begin to re-imagine a new approach to necessity to develop better serviced communities. Integrated, environmental and spatial justice. peace and security. sustainable communities. It’s urgent. In the short-term we are going to have to continue Communities which feel it’s worth their while investing in a Those are the four pillars on which GOOD’s policy stands. our disproportionate and unfair dependence on the police to nation we’d all like to live in. We know that fixing our communities and our country prevent our descending into chaos. This is unfair on both us cannot be achieved overnight. and the police. Communities in which our children’s dreams of better lives Good police don’t kill with rubber bullets COVID-19 UPDATE Ducking the third wave BY SAM SHABANE South Africans escaped another hard Covid lockdown for the Easter weekend, with President Cyril Ramaphosa appealing to citizens to accept The killing of a passer-by in a hail of rubber bullets fired by that has lost faith in the integrity of its government. responsibility for avoiding further trauma by maintaining face-mask, police in the general direction of protesting students at Wits It reflects the violence that has become the every-day reality social distancing and hygiene protocols. University on 10 March reflects a broken society in which the in our dear suffering land. Large parts of Europe are presently back under lockdown, and the lives of ordinary people, particularly Black people, are not pandemic is wreaking unprecedented havoc in South America. South regarded as precious. We must not allow ourselves to become hardened to this Africa has recorded the highest incidence of the virus in Africa, although injustice. not all continental statistics are considered reliable. Mthokozisi Ntumba, 35, was not a participant in the protest Addressing the nation at the end of March, a year after South Africa’s action. Good South Africans will welcome the arrest of four policemen first lockdown, Ramaphosa sought to balance the needs of the economy accused of taking Ntumba’s life. and public health. Liquor stores would temporarily close for the weekend; religious gatherings, restaurants and bars would remain open; and the Had he been a participant it wouldn’t make his killers any midnight to 4am curfew would remain. more or less guilty of the crime of murder. Our security forces cannot shoot, beat and kill with impunity. New infections would be closely monitored, with regulations to be The lives of our people are not so cheap. Just as the soldiers responsible for the death of Collins Khosa reviewed in mid-April, he said. in Alexandra for allegedly violating Covid lockdown provisions Scientists have predicted that a third wave in South Africa is imminent – Ntumba’s killing reflects an ill-disciplined and trigger-happy 11 months ago are held accountable for their foul deeds, so but the pandemic is unpredictable and nobody knows for sure. police force that is hopelessly unqualified to manage the Ntumba’s killers must learn that there are consequences for As at 31 March, South Africa had recorded more than 1.5m cases and 52 extreme pressures inequality and poverty exert on a society crime in South Africa. 788 Covid-related deaths. The country’s vaccination programme has got off to a very slow start. Wishing you a Happy Easter Page 1 The condition of Bonteheuwel is a disgrace Since the advent of democracy 27 years ago, the City of Cape Town has not developed a single social housing opportunity in these better located areas to which anyone from Bonteheuwel could potentially return. Without anywhere else to go, unless they can afford the expense of buying or renting in the suburbs, Bonteheuwel is forced to absorb its own population growth, becoming increasingly overcrowded. It was initially built for 35 000 people. The roads were built for 35 000 people, few of whom drove their own cars. The drains and sewers were built for 35 000. But more than 85 000 people live there today. Marlene Bousserhane is a grandmother who lives in a backyard Wendy House in Jasmine Street. Her name has been on the city’s housing waiting list for 23 years. She is among the residents who have formally opposed the proposed development of the Jasmine Street sportsfield, which is among the last pieces of public open space in the area. Developing this land won’t solve Bontas’ backyarders problem. It will only further densify the already overcrowded community and over-stretched infrastructure. Those fortunate enough to be able to move out of the backyards will be quickly replaced, while the community will forfeit a sports facility – a refuge dearly needed to promote health and safety for local youth, as opposed to the attractions of gangsterism. “Although I live in a Wendy House and have been waiting for a house for so many years, I don’t want a house on the sportsfield. Where must my grandchildren play? Why can’t they build houses in other areas? Why don’t they build houses on sportsfields in Rondebosch or Newlands?” Bousserhane showed WAARHEID! the condition of the streets. They are rutted and potholed, and had never been resurfaced since first being laid, she said. In CRUMBLING: Marlene Bousserhane and Michelle Breda say Bonteheuwel’s road network is winter, the roads become rivers and water gushed over crumbling, and turns into a river network in winter. the pavements and into peoples’ homes. Then she showed us Arcadia Primary School, her old school. It borders a rubbish dump. The Council won’t clean the filth because the land belongs to a provincial A group of born-and-bred Bonteheuwel aunties took gardens) to thousands of struggling members of the government department. WAARHEID! on a tour of their filthy and neglected community under lockdown. township that local councillor Angus Mackenzie (DA) “We recently cleared the site, on which we’d like to plant wants reclassified “a suburb”. Over the next few months WAARHEID! will visit various vegetables, and an apple farmer brought in his tractor communities to monitor municipalities’ progress (or lack to plough the ground. But a few weeks later, it’s back to Sights pointed out along the way included the of progress) in the development of better township living square one. booming backyard shack economy, crumbling road environments. and stormwater networks, thriving drug houses, “Show me which residents in which suburb live on and a disgusting informal dumpsite right next to a Bonteheuwel was established 60 years ago as Cape streets that become rivers and regularly flood their primary school. The aunties work as volunteers for Town’s first “Coloured township”, to accommodate homes. Show me which school in which suburb borders the Bonteheuwel Development Forum, which provided families forcibly removed from better areas of the city an open garbage dump. “This is the dumpsite Angus critical food support (daily meals and vegetable that were reserved for whites. wants to call a suburb,” Bousserhane said. Ou koek vannie councillor The only support residents living in a Bonteheuwel senior citizen’s complex got from their local councillor during last year’s lockdown was “ou koek” received a few days after his birthday.