GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
Unite for Change Leadership Council member and GOOD member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament
28 October 2025
Families on the Cape Flats deserve the same security, dignity, and protection afforded to tourists and those in the City’s wealthier neighbourhoods. Until government invests in the people who live here every day of the year, not only those who visit briefly, Cape Town cannot claim to be a world-class city.
The GOOD Party wants every tourist to enjoy a safe holiday in Cape Town. Tourism is vital to our economy; it creates jobs and supports local businesses. But a truly safe tourism season requires more than another branded enforcement unit and photo-op. It demands investment in the physical and socio-economic living conditions of the people who call this city home, especially those pushed to its margins by geography and inequality.
Right now, families on the Cape Flats are living under gunfire and there is no real plan to address this literal war zone, only an announcement that implies containing this crime to where it is prevalent is the priority.
Safety cannot be a privilege reserved for the few; it must be a constitutional right enjoyed by all, no matter their postcode.
In recent days, journalist and anti-crime activist Yusuf Abramjee has reported a wave of shootings and stabbings across the Cape Flats – from Manenberg, Delft, Vrygrond and Wesbank to Mitchells Plain, Athlone and Elsies River – many resulting in fatalities. He also highlights community-based data from Fight Against Crime SA, which recorded 225 violent incidents, including 168 shootings and 56 deaths, in just ten days (16–26 October 2025).
Yet today, the Western Cape Government is hosting a glossy media event to “ensure a safe tourist season” at one of Cape Town’s luxury hotels, complete with a photo-op featuring the Cape Town Tourism Law Enforcement Unit. This is inequality in action.
Neglect and exclusion didn’t end with apartheid in Cape Town, it continues daily. Policing alone cannot resolve a crisis manufactured by decades of harmful urban planning made worse by today’s failure to invest where the need is greatest.
GOOD has always made it clear that the crisis on the Cape Flats i rooted in structural injustice.
- Extreme overcrowding due to the legacy of spatial apartheid
- Persistent unemployment and poverty
- Substandard housing and degraded built environments
- Youth vulnerability and the pipeline into gang recruitment
At the same time national government has gone silent. South Africa’s quarterly crime statistics for the period 1 April to 30 June 2025 were expected on 16 October, but suddenly vanished from the official media release calendar without explanation.
Even without official statistics, the scale of violence is unmistakable.
These are not mere numbers. These are lives lost, families torn apart, neighbourhoods in trauma. Families on the Cape Flats deserve the same security and dignity enjoyed in the City’s wealthier neighbourhoods and tourist districts.