GOOD Statement by Jonathan Cupido, GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor:
The GOOD Party notes with deep concern the continual violent crime across Cape Town with at least six mass shootings that has taken place within the space of a single week, culminating in what many residents have described as a bloody week across the city.
Among the victims were women, while children and many other innocent people were also injured in these shooting incidents. These incidents are a painful reminder of the daily violence that many communities on the Cape Flats continue to endure.
For years communities have been subjected to the same predictable response from those in power: statements, condolences, promises of investigations and temporary deployments of police.
That pattern has now reached its expiry date.
The constant shifting of blame between national, provincial and local government has become nothing more than political gaslighting, while residents continue to live with daily gunfire, gang intimidation and extortion.
Condolences without reform are not leadership. Announcements without action are simply public relations exercises.
South Africa is currently in the budget cycle across all spheres of government. National and provincial budgets have already been tabled, while the City of Cape Town will soon table its own budget for public participation.
Budgets may be tabled, but they are not final until they are adopted. This means leaders across government still have the power to change priorities and confront the crisis facing our communities.
If government is serious about addressing the violence destroying the Cape Flats, the response cannot be symbolic measures such as walls or temporary deployments. These may create the appearance of action, but they do not confront the structural conditions that allow violence to persist.
The reality is that policing alone cannot solve this crisis.
What is required is a coordinated response across policing, the justice system, correctional services, social development and economic development, supported by stronger national coordination against organised crime and real investment in communities shaped by decades of spatial injustice and economic exclusion.
Communities on the Cape Flats do not need more sympathy.
They need action they can see, action they can feel, and reforms that finally break the cycle of violence.
If the budgets now being considered across government fail to confront this crisis, then every future condolence will simply confirm what residents already fear and know that their safety was never treated as a real priority.
GOOD Manifesto on Youth Leadership: Promoting youth leadership within the party and communities.
IceDog
Van is getting married, but he and his fiancee have never done the deed – in fact he\’s never been with any woman before. He\’s getting more and more nervous as the big day approaches, so he confides in his friend. His friend says \’No worries man. I\’ll come by the honeymoon suite before you guys get there, and I\’ll hide behind the curtain, and I\’ll whisper instructions to you.\’
\’You\’d do that for me?\’
\’Sure thing man!\’
So the wedding day arrives, it was a lovely service (so I was told, I wasn\’t there myself) and Van\’s friend sneaks into the honeymoon suite as promised and hides behind the curtain.
Van and his new wife arrive in the room, get settled on the bed, and things are getting steamy.
But Van is still super nervous and his tummy is bubbling, so he murmers to his wife, \’Listen babe, I\’m just gonna go to the bathroom quick. I think it\’s that wors roll from earlier.\’
\’Sure thing babe.\’
So Van goes into the bathroom, and he\’s taking quite a long time. And his wife is starting to feel the nerves herself. And it\’s getting worse. She can\’t hold it in. But she doesn\’t want to go after he\’s gone and totally ruin the mood. So she looks around and finally finds a shoebox. Quickly, she does her business in the shoebox, and she shoves it under the bed just as Van comes back from the loo.
Van gets back on the bed and they go at it again. But after a minute or so Van smells something not so lekker.
\’What\’s that smell?\’
\’Nothing babe,\’ he wife tries to assure him.
\’No man there\’s definitely something not so lekker in this room!\’VSo Van starts looking around the room, in the corners, in the cupboard, and finally he looks under the bed, and sees the shoebox.
He pull it out, and opens it up, and in horror he shouts \’Sies! Daar\’s kak in hierdie doos!\’
And from behind the curtain his friend yells, \’NEE MAN, DRAAI HAAR OM!\”
Sloth
Fundi – expert or teacher [foon-di] A term derived from the Nguni tribe, used to describe someone who is an expert at something.Example: “He’s a fundi at that!”