The Safety Plan Has Failed: You Cannot Arrest Away Inequality

This speech was delivered by GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament Brett Herron during today’s Subject for discussion: Debating the growing tide of violent crime in the Western Cape: its roots in social ills, the failures of provincial government responses, and the devastating impact on communities, health facilities and social development programmes:

The Western Cape has been gripped by violent crime that tears through communities, destabilises families, overwhelms clinics, and threatens schools.

But crime does not fall from the sky.

Let’s begin with the roots.

The blood on our streets is not about “bad people making bad choices.”

It is apartheid’s spatial planning. Entire communities dumped on the margins. Overcrowded. Stripped of opportunity. Trapped in poverty.

And this government? They have not fixed it. They’ve made it worse.

Packing more people into broken townships while shielding the wealthy suburbs. Ensuring the leafy neighbourhoods still have bathrooms bigger than most informal shelters. That is not justice. That is apartheid’s legacy, alive and well.

It is youth unemployment at nearly 50 percent, leaving young people vulnerable to gang recruitment. It is broken families, underfunded schools, and a lack of mental health and social support.

And yet, how has this government responded?

With a failing safety plan and fewer teachers in our schools. And every day we wake up to news of another shooting.  Why? Because policing treats the symptoms, not the disease. You cannot arrest away inequality. You cannot police away despair.

Socio-economic interventions strike at the heart of the problem. When young people have education, training, or work, gangs lose their grip. But if families remain crammed into overcrowded townships, backyard shacks, and informal settlements without dignity or services, crime will keep feeding on that desperation. But here’s the paradox: the more we spend on policing, the less we invest in the very programmes that would prevent crime.

The choice before us is stark: do we keep pouring money into a safety plan that has failed, or do we tackle the roots of crime with bold, sustained socio-economic investment?

We can police poverty, or we can end it.

Only one of those choices will break the cycle of gang violence in the Western Cape.

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