{"id":234840,"date":"2022-08-22T19:26:40","date_gmt":"2022-08-22T17:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/patrolling-this-area-at-night-is-a-nightmare-says-diepsloot-policing-forum\/"},"modified":"2022-08-22T19:26:40","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T17:26:40","slug":"diepsloot-community-desperate-for-electricity-to-reduce-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/diepsloot-community-desperate-for-electricity-to-reduce-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Diepsloot community desperate for electricity to reduce crime"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Chris%20Gilili\/solar_lights_in_diepsloot.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/diepsloot-community-desperate-for-electricity-to-reduce-crime.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">These are some of the solar powered streetlights installed in Extension 1, Diepsloot about three years ago. But they no longer operate according to residents. Photo: Chris Gilili<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Residents living in about 600 shacks in Diepsloot\u2019s Extension 1 want the City of Johannesburg to install electricity and provide public lighting.<\/li>\n<li>The area is overpopulated with informal shacks and inadequate communal toilets and taps.<\/li>\n<li>The Community Policing Forum says that the lack of lighting in Extension 1 makes it a nightmare to patrol this area at night.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cLife here has been hell without electricity and we are fed up,\u201d says Rider Sithole. He is a community leader in Diepsloot\u2019s Extension 1 where residents in about 600 shacks say the City of Johannesburg has ignored their pleas for electricity for years.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/diepsloot-community-desperate-for-electricity-to-reduce-crime.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>The area is overpopulated with informal shacks and inadequate communal toilets and taps. Faulty and smelling sewer water covers the streets and footpaths. Rubbish is also strewn all over.<\/p>\n<p>According to Sithole, who has lived in Diepsloot for two decades, the City installed solar towers and streetlights three years ago. He says the lights only worked for a week and were never fixed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithout working street lights, we are always victims of criminality. Criminals wait until it is dark and then they attack. There is a new incident every weekend: robbery, rape or someone being mugged. The councillors know about this but they are not willing to save us,\u201d says Sithole.<\/p>\n<p>Resident Angie Raboshakga says he walks a kilometre over the bridge in order to charge his phone at Extension 2 which has electricity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur kids are affected the most by this because they struggle with studying or doing their homework. I\u2019m forced to sometimes throw away spoiled meat and other perishable stock at my tuck shop. I\u2019m so disheartened. We really need power to survive,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Patrick Ngwenya says his family collects wood to make a fire to cook and boil water. \u201cNobody cares about us in Diepsloot. You can\u2019t walk safely at night here, it\u2019s dangerous. Even police seldom patrol this area because they are also sacred.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>GroundUp tried to get comment from Ward 95 Councillor, Julius Maake but he refused after several requests.<\/p>\n<p>Kate Matlala is the chairperson of the South African National Civil Organisation (SANCO) in Diepsloot and was the ward 95 councillor for five years until 2021. She told GroundUp that Extension 1 has never had electricity since it was established in 1990. \u201cWe wrote many petitions to the City for electrification,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>According to Matlala, the area first needs to be formalised before electricity can be installed. \u201cThe City needs to first determine the population size and create streets. However the project to formalise Extension 1 was hindered by infighting between local businesses and the City. So it might even take longer for electricity to be installed there,\u201d said Matlala.<\/p>\n<p>Diepsloot\u2019s Community Policing Forum (CPF) secretary Kutlwano Moalosi said, \u201cCriminals take advantage of the darkness. This makes our job very difficult. Patrolling this area at night is a nightmare. Some people get robbed and stabbed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said the infrastructure in the area was also a challenge for the CPF and police because vans can\u2019t navigate through the shacks. \u201cOfficers are forced to leave their cars on the main streets and walk in. This is a serious problem. More so at night,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>According to Moalisi, the CPF is also consistently engaging with councillors to urge that Extension 1 be formalised and electrified to fight crime easier.<\/p>\n<p>Questions sent to City spokesperson Nthatisi Modingoane and City Power\u2019s Isaac Mangena on Wednesday went unanswered.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/diepsloot-community-desperate-for-electricity-to-reduce-crime.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These are some of the solar powered streetlights installed in Extension 1, Diepsloot about three years ago. But they no longer operate according to residents. Photo: Chris Gilili Residents living in about 600 shacks in Diepsloot\u2019s Extension 1 want the City of Johannesburg to install electricity and provide public lighting. The area is overpopulated with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":234841,"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-234840","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\/diepsloot-community-desperate-for-electricity-to-reduce-crime.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234840","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=234840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}