The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) condemns the mass shooting in Athlone that claimed the lives of two women and a nine-month-old baby girl, and left others wounded, in yet another horrifying act of gun violence on the Cape Flats.
The horror of this violence is worsened by the fact that children are now being killed like collateral damage in gang warfare on the Cape Flats. The violence has become so unrelenting it refuses to spare the most vulnerable.
In the past year, the Cape Flats has seen a horrifying pattern of innocent young lives being taken by gunfire. Fourteen-year-old Alnika Mitchell was killed by a stray bullet while sitting outside her home in Kensington; a four-year-old boy, Davin Afrika, was struck and killed by stray bullets in his yard in Wesbank; four-year-old Qadir Boer was struck by a stray bullet in Hanover Park and died in hospital; and a nine-year-old boy was shot dead inside a home in Mitchells Plain during a triple murder, with his toy found next to his body.
Across the Cape Flats, official figures reveal that hundreds of children have been murdered in gang violence in recent years, highlighting a pattern of systemic failure that sees children butchered in their homes, in yards, and on the streets where they should be safe.
Yet instead of confronting this with urgency and clarity, President Cyril Ramaphosa echoed platitudes in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) and offered gestures rather than solutions. He has chosen to deploy the SANDF while failing to directly address the root causes and specific devastation unfolding on the Cape Flats.
It is only after the EFF repeatedly called for the establishment of an ad hoc parliamentary committee dedicated to the crisis in the Cape Flats to investigate the collapse of policing, the unchecked flow of illegal firearms, intelligence failures, and the deeper socio-economic conditions that feed this violence, that our motion was finally approved but as a multiportfolio parliamentary inquiry into the violent crime crisis in Cape Town. This will be led by the Portfolio Committee on Police in collaboration with the Portfolio Committee on Social Development and committees within the security cluster.
Now that Parliament has established this inquiry on crime in the Cape Flats, the EFF insists that a key focus of its work must be to follow up on investigations, arrests, prosecutions and convictions related specifically to the killing of children. The committee cannot become another talk shop. It must demand accountability from SAPS, the NPA, Crime Intelligence, and the Ministry of Police.
Every case where a child has been murdered must be tracked, and every investigation scrutinised. And all perpetrators must face the full might of the law.
Beyond the establishment of the multi-portfolio inquiry, the EFF will advocate for a fully resourced, accountable, and transparent national plan to dismantle gang networks, control illegal firearms, and restore safety to communities; and a real investment in social development, policing, and economic interventions to protect innocent lives.
The EFF advocates for the decolonization of education and public institutions.
Marbles
Laduma! – he scores! [laa-doo-maa] This term is usually screamed out when a soccer team scores a goal. Extend any of the syllables for full effect.Example: “Laaaaaaduuuuumaaaa!”
Ginger Chaos
India: You have two cows. You create a new country to banish all your people who might eat them.