GANGS

FROM SAFETY PLAN TO SAFETY SHAM

/ GOOD Speech / By

That is nearly three murders every single day. Or, to put it plainly: one gang-related killing every eight hours. We cannot allow ourselves to grow numb to these numbers.
They are not abstract. They represent lives lost, families torn apart, and communities living under siege.
Yet, yesterday, when I sat down to hear the so-called review of the Safety Plan, I did not hear urgency. I did not hear honesty. I did not hear accountability.  The review we were promised did not happen. It was a disgrace. A profound letdown. A review, by definition, means assessing whether a plan has worked, what has failed, and what must change.  It means testing claims against evidence, admitting shortcomings, and facing hard truths.

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THE SAFETY PLAN HAS FAILED: YOU CANNOT ARREST AWAY INEQUALITY

/ GOOD Speech / By

 The Western Cape has been gripped by violent crime that tears through communities, destabilises families, overwhelms clinics, and threatens schools.
But crime does not fall from the sky.
Let’s begin with the roots.
The blood on our streets is not about “bad people making bad choices.”
It is apartheid’s spatial planning. Entire communities dumped on the margins. Overcrowded. Stripped of opportunity. Trapped in poverty.
And this government? They have not fixed it. They’ve made it worse.

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CACHALIA IS RIGHT: WESTERN CAPE HAS NO COHERENT STRATEGY FOR GANG VIOLENCE

/ GOOD Statement / By

The Acting Minister of Police is right to be concerned. There is ‘No proper plan in Cape Town to deal with gang violence’.
More than a year since the Western Cape Government and the City of Cape Town signed a Cooperation Agreement with SAPS, the promised coordination, intelligence-sharing, and joint response to crime remain largely on paper. The failure to implement even the most basic provisions of this agreement is emblematic of a broader truth that the Western Cape does not have a policing problem alone, it has a governance problem.

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CONFRONTING THE WESTERN CAPE’S MASS SHOOTING CRISIS – COUNTING THE DEAD IS NOT A SAFETY PLAN

/ GOOD Speech / By

I am going to paint you a story: Two men walk into a barbershop. There are a few clients in chairs getting their hair cut, most are children. It’s a seemingly normal day, until the men open fire in the barbershop, killing four people, including three children.
All the children are under the age of thirteen, the youngest aged five. All there to assumedly get their hair cut. Now this is not some fictional story, this happened. Last year, in June, when 2 armed gunmen walked into the Mzwa barber shop on Gqrwarha Street, in Khayelitsha.

CONFRONTING THE WESTERN CAPE’S MASS SHOOTING CRISIS – COUNTING THE DEAD IS NOT A SAFETY PLAN Read More »

NEW POLICE MINISTER MUST PRIORITISE GANG CRISIS OVER POLITICAL TURF WARS

/ GOOD Statement / By

Today, South Africa will have a new Minister of Police. GOOD welcomes the appointment of Professor Firoz Cachalia to this critical portfolio at a time when public trust in the police is dangerously low, and the entire criminal justice system is under unprecedented scrutiny.
The appointment follows explosive allegations made by KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, implicating senior figures in our police service, intelligence structures, prosecuting authority, and political leadership. These allegations must be taken seriously, and due process must follow but they cannot be allowed to consume the entire focus of the new minister.

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

/ GOOD Statement / By

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

/ GOOD Statement / By

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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DA RESPONSE TO RUPERT ABROGATES RESPONSIBILITY FOR WESTERN CAPE GANGSTERISM

/ GOOD Statement / By

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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MURDER HAS A FAVOURITE PLAYGROUND AND THE GANGS ARE IN CHARGE

/ GOOD Statement / By

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

/ GOOD Speech / By

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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