{"id":233353,"date":"2022-08-04T18:56:29","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T16:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/cosatu-protesters-chase-away-officials-during-march-against-crime\/"},"modified":"2022-08-04T18:56:29","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T16:56:29","slug":"cosatu-protesters-chase-away-officials-during-march-against-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/cosatu-protesters-chase-away-officials-during-march-against-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"COSATU protesters chase away officials during march against crime"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) organised a march against crime in Cape Town yesterday. The federation had expected more than 3,000 marchers but only a few hundred turned up. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks<\/p>\n

Protesters from unions affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) turned away two government representatives when they came to collect lists of demands in Cape Town on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The protesters were demanding that the national (ANC) and provincial (DA) governments end gang violence, conduct regular police patrols in industrial areas, improve safety at railway stations and allow communities to evaluate their police stations. They also demanded a comprehensive review of the fuel price regime to reduce fuel costs.<\/p>\n

COSATU had said at least 3,000 people would attend but only a few hundred joined the protest. The union\u2019s provincial secretary Malvern De Bruyn said the numbers were disappointing.<\/p>\n

Protesters held up signs reading \u201cFuel hikes suffocate workers\u201d, \u201cRemove corrupt police officers\u201d and \u201cStop playing politics with our lives\u201d while marching to the provincial legislature, Cape Town Civic Centre and parliament.<\/p>\n

When Cape Town mayor\u2019s chief of staff James-Brent Styan came to collect the memo on behalf of mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, he was chased away by protesters.<\/p>\n

Styan said Hill-Lewis was not available to collect the memo. He said some of the demands were not part of the mandate of local government, but he agreed that more needed to be done. \u201cWe support the fact that someone is driving more attention to this.\u201d<\/p>\n

An address by the rMEC for Police Oversight and Community Safety, Reagen Allen, was cut short when protesters demanded to speak to Western Cape Premier Alan Winde instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Premier remains committed to engage with COSATU,\u201d said Allen. \u201cIf I had the time, I would have marched with you to the national parliament to show that we need to take the fight to the national government as well.\u201d Allen was asked to leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to speak to the Premier directly,\u201d said COSATU provincial chair Motlatsi Tsubane. \u201cThey have misdirected their resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t experience the situation where when you wake up in the morning and go to the bus stop, you\u2019re mugged, robbed, or killed. You, as an ordinary worker, have no one to protect you.\u201d Tsubane told protestors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe violence in our communities is becoming worse,\u201d said Pauline Petersen, a shop steward for the South African Textile Workers Unions (SACTWU). \u201cOur families are being killed and raped and nothing is being done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petersen lives in Heideveld and works as a machinist in Maitland. She said she spends R300 a week commuting to work and earns R1,200 weekly after deductions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very dangerous there. People shoot everyday and everyday people die in Hanover Park, Manenberg and Heideveld. Nobody does anything because its not their children it\u2019s our families being raped and killed and its heartbreaking to see that every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Policing alone cannot deal with crime, says Police Minister<\/h2>\n

Police minister Bheki Cele addressed the protesters, saying more police resources had been allocated to the Western Cape than to other provinces.<\/p>\n

He said of the 30 police stations with the highest crime rate eight were in the Western Cape. Every three months a selected group of 200 officers was sent to the eight police stations with the highest crime.<\/p>\n

Cele said the Western Cape is also \u201cthe only province that has a fully-fledged anti-gang unit\u201d. He said out of the 5,000 police officers trained in 2019, 1,200 sent to the Western Cape.<\/p>\n

He said SAPS had started shifting its resources from low density crime stations to high density crime stations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe provincial commissioner has moved resources from these stations you talk about. Whenever I\u2019m here to collect dead bodies, I\u2019ve never collected dead bodies from Constantia, Bishops Court or Camps Bay. All dead bodies come from the Cape Flats, if not, Hanover, it\u2019s Khayelitsha, Delft,\u201d said Cele.<\/p>\n

He said that \u201cpolicing alone cannot deal with crime\u201d and that the \u201cmajor problem\u201d is the lack of infrastructure within the communities experiencing high crime rates.<\/p>\n

Cele said when police are called to areas like Covid informal settlement, they need to leave their vans and walk in \u201cbecause there are no roads\u201d. \u201cYou can\u2019t walk there, there\u2019s no light and its dark, there\u2019s no streets or house numbers. Even if you call the police, you can\u2019t tell the police where to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Nyanga there is a large hijacking rate because there are huge potholes so cars are forced to slow down and they are hijacked. That\u2019s why local, provincial and national government need to work together to improve the situation,\u201d said Cele<\/p>\n

Cele said SAPS had recruited 10,000 trainee officers to be deployed across the country by December.<\/p>\n

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Police Minister Bheki Cele told protesters that policing alone cannot deal with high crime rates. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) organised a march against crime in Cape Town yesterday. The federation had expected more than 3,000 marchers but only a few hundred turned up. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks Protesters from unions affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) turned away two government representatives when they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":233354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-233353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/cosatu-protesters-chase-away-officials-during-march-against-crime.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}