CAPE TOWN

R562 MILLION LATER – STILL NO PERMANENT WCED HEAD OFFICE, NO INNER-CITY HOUSING, AND NO ACCOUNTABILITY

The Western Cape Government has spent over half a billion rand on office space for the Western Cape Education Department (WCED),yet it still has no permanent headquarters. This alarming misuse of public funds was revealed in written responses to GOOD by current Infrastructure MEC Tertuis Simmers and former MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela, following parliamentary questions submitted in November 2020, and again in April and June 2025.

R562 MILLION LATER – STILL NO PERMANENT WCED HEAD OFFICE, NO INNER-CITY HOUSING, AND NO ACCOUNTABILITY Read More »

MITCHELLS PLAIN MASSACRE: ANOTHER TRAGIC SYMPTOM OF A VIOLENT, UNJUST CITY

The GOOD Party is devastated by the spate of gang-related shootings in Mitchell’s Plain, which left five people dead and seven more injured across multiple locations. Our hearts go out to the families mourning loved ones, and to the communities once again living in fear. This is not the first tragedy of its kind, and heartbreakingly, it will not be the last, unless our government at all levels finds the courage to face the truth that this is not just a policing crisis, this is a planning, poverty, and inequality crisis.

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GUN VIOLENCE AND SPATIAL INJUSTICE: CAPE TOWN’S DEEPENING CRISIS

Gun violence continues to plague the Western Cape, and the City of Cape Town remains disturbingly unprepared, and seemingly unwilling, to confront the root causes of the crisis. In June, seven people were gunned down in a mass shooting at a home in the Kanana Informal Settlement, Gugulethu. In a separate incident in White City, Nyanga, two men were murdered in cold blood. Just days earlier, the bodies of three men were discovered in Samora Machel. These are not isolated incidents, they are symptoms of a deepening urban crisis rooted in inequality, spatial injustice, and the persistent failure of leadership.

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CHANELLE PLAATJIES IS MORE THAN A NAME: THE WESTERN CAPE’S FAILURE TO PROTECT ITS GIRLS

Today, a female body was discovered during a community search for missing teenager, Chanelle Plaatjies. Chanelle was reported missing by her mother on May 28. We do not yet have confirmation that the body is hers nor whether there is evidence of any rape, but we do know this – Chanelle is more than a name, more than a photo on a missing poster. She is the face of a growing crisis, one that is swallowing our children, especially our girls, in silence and shadow. Gender-based violence and femicide are a national crisis, and the Western Cape is not immune. The statistics show that girls and women are no safer today, despite the province’s multi-billion-rand safety plan.

As we start Youth Month, running concurrently with Child Protection Week. We need to reflect on the environment our children are growing up in. When rape and murder become a normalised part of childhood in working-class communities, when children go missing and no emergency is declared, that is policy failure.

CHANELLE PLAATJIES IS MORE THAN A NAME: THE WESTERN CAPE’S FAILURE TO PROTECT ITS GIRLS Read More »

DEVOLUTION ISN’T A CURE, IT’S A DISTRACTION

The Western Cape Government has once again turned to its favourite scapegoat, National Government, calling for the devolution of policing powers as if that alone will put an end to the bloodshed on our streets. This latest call comes in the wake of another tragic quarter of crime data that paints a clear picture that the gangsters remain in charge, and the Western Cape Government is still out of ideas. From January to March 2025, 1,068 people were murdered in the Western Cape. While the province recorded a 4% decline from the same quarter last year, it shows that 81% of all murders in the province occur within the City of Cape Town alone.

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DA RESPONSE TO RUPERT ABROGATES RESPONSIBILITY FOR WESTERN CAPE GANGSTERISM

The DA has outrageously washed its hands of responsibility for transforming the culture of gangsterism in the Western Cape until it is given control of the police. The party has been running the governments of Cape Town and the Western Cape for nearly two decades, more than long enough to implement its policies and programmes, but it takes no responsibility for gangsterism, which it blames solely on incompetent national policing.

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BOOI WALKS, BUT QUESTIONS REMAIN

GOOD is deeply disappointed by the State’s decision to provisionally withdraw charges in the R1 billion tender fraud case involving former City of Cape Town Mayoral Committee Member Malusi Booi, alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield, his wife Nicole Johnson, and more than 20 others. The National Director of Public Prosecutions must explain why the National Prosecuting Authority appears ill-equipped or unprepared to pursue complex but crucial prosecutions involving politicians and public officials allegedly linked to organised crime. The residents of Cape Town deserve justice, not delays, deflections, or deals behind closed doors.

BOOI WALKS, BUT QUESTIONS REMAIN Read More »

MURDER HAS A FAVOURITE PLAYGROUND AND THE GANGS ARE IN CHARGE

The numbers tell a grim story, 25,423 people lost their lives in South Africa between April 2024 and March 2025. This is a tragedy, one that policymakers can’t spin, downplay, or hide behind minor percentage decreases. In the Western Cape, where the province has robbed the education and healthcare budgets to fund a safety plan, a chilling 4,467 murders were recorded in the 2024/2025 financial year. And although this is a decrease of 1.7% from the previous financial year, it is the second-highest annual toll in the past six years. Any celebration over a marginal decrease is not just premature, it’s deeply offensive to the communities still mourning.

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BOASTING ABOUT NUMBERS WHILE CHILDREN ARE CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE

It is shocking, deeply shocking, that a City of Cape Town official can stand up and boast about a reduction in the number of gang-related gunshots in Hanover Park. A statistic like that, stripped of context, is meaningless. A reduction in gunfire doesn’t automatically signal safety. It could just as easily mean the assailants are getting more accurate. But what makes this even more disturbing is that we are being asked to celebrate an empty number while our children are under siege.

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METRO CLEANING TARIFF: WHAT IS THE NATURE OF AFRIFORUM’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DA?

Afriforum hasn’t made a peep about drastic new cleaning tariffs contained in the City of Cape Town proposed budget, but it is threatening to take the City of Tshwane to court over a similar – much lower – cleaning tariff proposal. Why is Afriforum being so hypocritical? Because Cape Town is led by the DA, with which Afriforum is in a close relationship, while the DA in Tshwane is still licking its wounds after losing power in the capital city.

METRO CLEANING TARIFF: WHAT IS THE NATURE OF AFRIFORUM’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DA? Read More »

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