Western Cape premier candidate for Rize Mzansi has handed over a memorandum of grievances at the Mfuleni police station, calling for an end to police corruption and illegal firearms. The party, which is on the election campaign trail, says creating safe communities is one of its top priorities.
They picketed outside the Mfuleni police station to highlight the enormous problem of crime in the area. In the latest incident in the province, five people including a woman, were shot dead in Harare in Khayelitsha on Wednesday.
Mfuleni is among the police stations with the highest murder rate in the Western Cape. Along with Nyanga, Gugulethu and Delft, Mfuleni features among the top 10 with the highest murder rates in the country.
The police station covers the areas of Mfuleni, Bluedowns and Wesbank.
Many informal settlements have mushroomed around these areas over the years. Premier candidate for Rise Mzansi in the Western Cape, Axolile Notywala, says his party will picket at other top crime stations in the province in the coming weeks, as part of its election campaign.
“We understand some of these illegal firearms have come from the police. You would know there is a case of a former police officer, Christiaan Prinsloo, that sold over 2000 guns to the Western Cape. Over a thousand of these guns have killed people in the Western Cape. They’ve killed over 150 children in the Western Cape, and they continue to kill children. These are the guns we are saying need to be removed from our streets. And for that we need the police to be properly resourced in terms of crime intelligence, because it’s not only police officers that can deal with this. We need leadership.”
Supporter and resident of Wesbank, Lindy Jacobs, says crime is out of hand in her area.
“I’m calling on the Minister of Police Bheki Cele to release more police officers, more police vans because there is no police visibility in Wesbank, while the gangsters are running with guns. There are shootings every day, as we are standing here now, there is about two funerals that are taking place in Wesbank and police are not visible. Moreover, we called the police at 6 o’clock in the morning and they tell me that they are changing shifts. Wesbank is bleeding, our children are dying in Wesbank.”
Police representatives received the memorandum and promised to forward it to the relevant authorities. They have been given two weeks to respond.
