Chanelle Plaatjies Is More Than a Name

GOOD Statement by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament:

Today, a female body was discovered during a community search for missing teenager, Chanelle Plaatjies. Chanelle was reported missing by her mother on May 28. We do not yet have confirmation that the body is hers nor whether there is evidence of any rape, but we do know this – Chanelle is more than a name, more than a photo on a missing poster. She is the face of a growing crisis, one that is swallowing our children, especially our girls, in silence and shadow. Gender-based violence and femicide are a national crisis, and the Western Cape is not immune. The statistics show that girls and women are no safer today, despite the province’s multi-billion-rand safety plan.

As we start Youth Month, running concurrently with Child Protection Week. We need to reflect on the environment our children are growing up in. When rape and murder become a normalised part of childhood in working-class communities, when children go missing and no emergency is declared, that is policy failure.

Between January and March this year, 1 189 rapes and 411 sexual assaults were reported in the Western Cape. While SAPS data doesn’t break these numbers down by gender, we know from experience, research, and reality that most of the victims are women and girls.

These statistics are not abstract. They represent real people, real trauma, real lives upended. The communities already haunted by the highest murder rates in the country, like Delft and Mfuleni, also sit at the top of the list for reported sexual offences.

The violence is not just random, it’s intimate and close. Over half of rapes occur in homes, whether of the victim, the perpetrator, or someone both knew. 12% happen in public spaces, streets, fields, parks -places where people should feel safe to walk, play, and live.

We are six years into a “Safety Plan” that was sold to us as a solution. The plan was meant to reduce violent crime and reclaim communities. Instead, the province has poured billions into policing while failing to make women and children safer.
The rape statistics for the Province since the plan’s inception tell a clear story:

• 2019/20 – 4,877
• 2020/21 – 4,442
• 2021/22 – 4,843
• 2022/23 – 5,029
• 2023/24 – 4,825
• 2024/25 – 4,654
  No consistent decline. No structural shift. No safety.

The province’s murder statistics show an even more disturbing trend:

• 2019/20 – 3,975
• 2020/21 – 3,848
• 2021/22 – 4,109
• 2022/23 – 4,150
• 2023/24 – 4,544
• 2024/25 – 4,467

We need to stop pretending this is working. We need to stop pretending our girls are safe.

The Western Cape has a violence problem. It has a gang problem. It has a murder problem. But beneath all of this, it has a governance crisis, a province with the money to act, but not the political will to care.
Until our plans start from the ground up and not from glossy press conferences, we will keep finding bodies in open fields and digging graves for girls like Chanelle.

GOOD Manifesto on GOOD Governance: Upholding principles of GOOD governance.

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