GOOD Statement by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General:
The GOOD Party is devastated by the spate of gang-related shootings in Mitchell’s Plain, which left five people dead and seven more injured across multiple locations. Our hearts go out to the families mourning loved ones, and to the communities once again living in fear.
This is not the first tragedy of its kind, and heartbreakingly, it will not be the last, unless our government at all levels finds the courage to face the truth that this is not just a policing crisis, this is a planning, poverty, and inequality crisis.
According to the SAPS, these attacks were carried out in broad daylight, targeting people at tuck shops in Beaconvalley and extending to other parts of Mitchell’s Plain, including Tafelsig. As investigations by the Anti-Gang Unit begin, we need to stop only reacting to incidents but also start proactively taking steps to address the systemic failures that allow gangs to flourish.
In the first 3 months of this year, 902 people were murdered in the City of Cape Town, 197 of those deaths were gang-related killings. These crimes are symptoms of a deliberate failure to confront the spatial and socio-economic injustice that defines life on the Cape Flats.
Residents in these areas live in a city where opportunities are walled off by poverty, geography, and decades of broken promises. The DA-led City continues to entrench these divisions through a new planning policy (amendment to the Municipal Planning By-law) that doubles down on apartheid spatial design. While the DA-led Province continues pouring billions into a so-called safety plan that offers reactionary enforcement instead of proactive change.
Cape Town needs a real plan to dismantle the root causes of gang violence – poor schooling, high unemployment, lack of affordable housing near jobs, and the deliberate abandonment of the Cape Flats.
The people of Mitchell’s Plain, Gugulethu, Samora Machel, Philippi, Lwandle, and Khayelitsha deserve more than condolences; they deserve real change. Until that comes, gang violence will remain the bloody proof of our government’s failure.
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