GOOD Statement by Axolile Notywala, GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor:
The past week’s violence has once again torn through our communities, leaving women, children, and families devastated. By 11 a.m. today, eight people had already been killed, three of them reportedly women. In Montclair, Tambo Village, Nyanga, and across the Cape Flats, lives have ended in ways that have become tragically routine. Femicide and gender-based violence have reached epidemic levels, yet the City continues to recycle failed strategies that do nothing to address the causes of this crisis.
We cannot separate this violence from the deep structural inequality and poverty that define life on the Cape Flats. These are not isolated “incidents of crime”; they are the predictable outcomes of decades of social neglect of communities stripped of opportunity, left without safe housing, meaningful employment, or access to trauma and mental health support.
Even JP Smith, the City’s own Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, recently conceded during the last Safety and Security Portfolio Committee meeting that the municipality has not allocated enough resources to address the social roots of violent crime. This admission confirms what residents and the GOOD Party have long known: enforcement without investment will never deliver safety.
The City’s much-publicised deployment of over 700 new Metro Police officers, five per ward, is being touted as a breakthrough for community policing. But this approach is neither equitable nor effective. In affluent suburbs, it amounts to over-policing and duplication of safety resources. In working-class communities, where violence is rooted in unemployment, overcrowding, substance abuse, and trauma, it is under-policing in the truest sense, a thin blue line stretched across systemic collapse.
Safety cannot be achieved through drone flights, peace officers, and PR campaigns alone. It demands a commitment to rebuilding the social fabric: funding safe houses that turn no woman away, trauma counselling for survivors and children, youth programmes that provide purpose and dignity, and economic empowerment that allows women to leave abusive environments. Until the City invests in prevention and social development with the same urgency it applies to law enforcement, this cycle of violence will continue.
The Democratic Alliance’s repeated claims that Cape Town is the “best-run city” ring hollow against the sound of gunfire and the grief of families burying their daughters. Governance cannot be measured by marketing slogans while the poorest residents live and die in fear.
This city deserves more than recycled plans and empty assurances. We deserve safety that is built on justice, equality, dignity, and the courage to act on real, sustainable solutions.
GOOD Manifesto on Health and Well-being: Promoting health and well-being initiatives.
fiend oblivion
Thailand: You have two cows. One of them was born a bull.
Flashpoint
Sudan: You have two cows. The southern one ran away because it contains more beef.