SPEECH
2 mins
+ intro with background pics of Cape Town: beautiful but challenges and vulnerable groupings
- sequence of comments:
[on main picture]
> Cape Town, also called the “Mother City” second biggest City in South Africa after Johannesburg,
founded in 1652, population of 3.74 million people, covering 2454 square kms, our Mayor, Alderman
Patricia de Lille
[vineyards]
> Cape Town is indeed a beautiful City, famous for our winelands and vineyards, Table Mountain, the
Waterfront, our beaches and pleasant weather that make for great tourism experiences
> We are fortunate to be blessed with abundantly beautiful natural scenery and attractive architecture
and built environment that is well-maintained
> BUT [at nightime picture] there is also a darker side to the City
> we are also a City of challenges:
>> with massive and rapid urbanisation making it impossible to supply housing for everybody,
problems leading to large informal settlements
>> with high levels of poverty and unemployment
>> with drug and alcohol abuse
>> and a street gang culture that is deeply entrenched in some communities
> indeed we have a high crime rate in South Africa and Cape Town is not exempt from this problem
> while it has been steadily reducing since 1994 and more specifically from 2003 [crime stat slide] and
has massively reduced in many suburbs and the City Centre, there is still a very high crime rate in
parts of our City
> so we need a sizable police service
+ policing “business as usual” [cycle through action shots]

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21 000 SAPS / 1 800 MPD. Traffic & LE
27 CIDs
9 800 registered NHW members in 182 registered neighbourhood watches (but a total
estimated number of 27 000 – 32 000)
And we must do a lot of policing, with the best technology we can afford and the best training for our
police so they know the laws, their procedures, the technology they work with and the we must have
strict discipline so that the force remains corruption free and is seen by the public to be fighting crime
on their side.
3-4 mins
+ other innovations list
[starting CCTV picture > moving onto word “INNO”]
> But the lesson you learn quickly in a country like South Africa is that you cannot win this battle with
numbers or perhaps more appropriately, straightforward policing is not the answer to stopping crime.
[moving onto word “VATION”]
> Because I suspect that some of you will be struggling with some of the same problems of poverty,
unemployment, social exclusion and crime, I would like to offer some ideas of projects that have
helped us turn the tide in Cape Town
[moving onto word “CID”]
CIDs
> one of the changes or innovations that most tourists and visitors, international and domestic notice
the impact of, without necessarily understanding what it is that has achieved this are the City
Improvement Districts (CIDs) or Special rating Areas (SRAs) that have helped transform Cape Town
by focusing on the two large contributors to urban decay: crime and grime
> although the Central City Improvement District was the first, it has now been joined by 26 other
CIDs and is not even the largest one in the City anymore
> it has however transformed the Central Business District (CBD) or Inner City and slashed crime in
the City centre dramatically, to around one eight of what it was around 2000
> [walk through CID slides very quickly]
Partnerships
> the building of partnerships has been critical to much of the City’s recent focus, progress and in fact
achievements, this has included partnerships with the private sector and businesses and
communities, especially in the form of community policing.
> in this manner we have succeeded in getting sponsorship from a large insurance company for traffic
pointsmen wearing their branding, from large housing estates for extra police, from CIDs for LE staff
to work alongside their private security and from other spheres of government and other departments
in the City Council
Rent-A-Cop
[skip back to 2 LE pics in CID presentation and 2 Outsurance pics]
> in this regard I must single out the Rent-A-Cop (or Contracted & Externally-Funded Law
Enforcement) programme
> this has allowed us to add 130 “rent-a-cop” officers to the enforcement staff of the City without cost
to the City or additional tax burden to our general ratepayers
> it is important to note that these staff remain under the command and control of their regular line
function managers and do not answer directly to the sponsoring entity as we must guard against the
abuse of police power and the subversion of proper policing procedure and priorities
> the contracting parties do, however, get to determine the area of patrol of these rent-a-cops
> the project has proven very successful and is growing steadily every year and we project over 240
rent-a-cops by end 2015
NHW support programme
[move to pic of Northpine NHW]
> as I already mentioned, the City has succeeded in recruiting and training along with the Provincial
Government an astonishing 9800 registered NHW members in 182 registered neighbourhood
watches (with an estimated total number of 27 000 – 32 000 exist, including unregistered patrollers)
> however, without proper training and oversight these neighbourhood watches can become little
more than vigilantes terrorising residents and engaging in frequent brutality
> the main focus of the City is therefore training and we have trained nearly 3000 NHW members in
the last 2 years and thereafter we are assisting them with resources such as jackets or bibs, torches,
two-way radios and bicycles
> in addition, we have found that a very good way to professionalise the neighbourhood watches
while at the same time developing skills among keen security activists, has been the development of
the City’s Law enforcement Auxiliary Service
LE Auxiliary Service
[move to LE AUX slide]
> while reservists units are nothing new, Cape Town is the only local authority in South Africa to have
deployed reservists or auxiliary members in addition to what the national police force (SAPS) have
> we have also recruited exclusively from NHW ranks and tailored our training to ensure that the new
LE Aux members will continue to patrol, in uniform, with their NHWs to augment the existing good
work being done by these community patrollers, to professionalise them, give them access to the
relevant policing powers through the handful of Aux members that now patrol with the NHWs
participating in the new programme so that the communities are empowered to help themselves, but
within the legal framework and with adequate oversight
> at the same time we are training people with much needed skills and offering them a foot in the door
when new vacancies arise so that they have a competitive edge over other applicants
[move to pic of new members passing out
> Council approved the Reserve Law Enforcement Service Policy for the City at the end of 2010 and
the first 32 members received their appointment certificates as duly authorised peace officers and City
Law Enforcement members recently and are now patrolling with their NHWs
----Technology
> Technology has allowed many innovations in policing and Cape Town has embraced this to the hilt
> One of the previous Mayors, who is now our provincial premier, Helen Zille, previously voted Best
Mayor of the World in an online contest, started us off on an ambitious path to the implementation of
fully integrated spatially enabled resource and response management system (ISERMS), which would
allow for Compstat-like real-time planning and intelligence-driven policing while improving our crimefighting response. We are two years away from implementing this.
CCTV
[STARTING with CCTV marker - skip quickly through CCTV presentation slides]
> In the meantime, we have been steadily expanding our CCTV network, both as a crime fighting tool,
but also as an urban management tool to deal with municipal services
> this is nothing new and most cities across the world now employ CCTV camera technology to some
extent
[move on to slide of bottom-up approach – SKIP through quickly]
> again, it has been in the area of partnership where I feel that we have struck a new chord
> after numerous communities started experimenting with their own CCTV and ANPR installations,
the City was gradually moving in the direction of trying to block this and to try and assert its monopoly
on CCTV installations
> however, at the end of last year we started to formulate a policy that would see us support such
installations where they have been approved after certain criteria are met, giving them access to
municipal infrastructure like light poles
> the benefit for the City is that we gain access to the footage and ANPR data they are generating
and thereby also expand our CCTV reach much further and faster than the City would have been able
to do with its own budget
Shotspotter
[move on to GUNFIRE DETECTION slide]
> a similar technology which we have researched quite a bit and are about to do a pilot installation of
involves not just looking at what criminals are doing, but listening to them through the use of gunfire
detection technology
----Functional Specialisation
> It is perhaps in the area of functional specialisation that Cape Town has most differentiated itself
from the national policing strategy by investing in various specialised units
> while units such as a tactical response unit, and specialised units dealing with metal theft, homeless
people, prostitution and human trafficking, drugs, street gangs, slum buildings, liquor control, informal
trading, public transport, marine and environmental protection, special investigations, special
unmarked traffic units and animal control are commonplace throughout police and local law
enforcement services everywhere, there are two particular innovations that we feel have stood out
among the others and have taken us in exciting new directions
----NSO (Broken Windows)
[move to 1st NSO banner slide]
> "repurposing" CTMPD as the trouble-shooters, the go-to people in the community
> this entails a dedicated Police Officer in village-sized area which he gets to know like the back of his
hand
> training is everything and we have had a strong focus on Broken Windows and Community Oriented
Problem Solving Policing
> NSOs are tasked to promote open communication and cooperation amongst all stake holders –
particular area
> harnessing the collective resources of law enforcement agencies, City and Private Sector towards
the solving of crime and disorder related problems.
> similar principles applied in USA (COPS), UK (London Neighbourhood Safety Teams) and
Netherlands (Amsterdam Buurtregie)
> 17 NSOs deployed in Cape Town to date with more to follow next year – project has started to
accelerate as individual city councillors start raising funding and setting portions of their dedicated socalled ward allocations budgets aside for the expansion of this very successful programme
SRO
[move to 1st SRO banner slide]
> Similar in concept to the NSO programme except that the area where the officer is operational is
even more defined – a single school grounds
> the main objectives is to provide a safe school environment to allow scholars to be able to move to
and from school and attend school safely
> as with the NSO programme it hinges heavily on partnerships: promoting respect and
understanding for police/law enforcement officers, encouraging learners and communities to be
partners in building safer schools and communities.
> the SROs also support the facilitation of life skills after hours and the cultivation of personal
accountability through mentoring, home visits and addressing truancy
> Cape Town has also linked this link programme to weekend long to Youth Academy “bootcamps”
----Graffiti clean-up squads (an offer to the Mayor of Torino)
> on the subject of “indicators of disorder”
> Mr. Mayor, the Honourable Mr. Piero Fossino, you have a beautiful City
> I have spent the last weekend walking about it amazed at its deep history, beautiful architecture and
extraordinary vaulted arcades
> as a repayment, please permit me to offer a solution to one of the blights your City does endure:
graffiti
[go to 1st graffiti slide]
> coupled with our gang culture in Cape Town, this was also a major problem for us
> we started with trying to usual commercial service providers – companies that charged us a lot of
money to clean very little graffiti and we have also tried cleaning it up with City staff, but this is slow
and also not financially affordable to deal with the scope of problem
> we also initially started with a heavy policing focus that was targeting the graffiti vandals
> we soon realised that (a) we could not catch them with any meaningful frequency and (b) that
society by and large did not see this as something very serious
> we decided to change gear and started working for a broader change in the attitude of communities
and to focus on removing the graffiti as fast as it is applied, which led us to discover that if you
remove it quickly frequently enough, the vandals give up
> so, some time ago we started to experiment with using NGOs working with homeless people as a
form of rehabilitation and sheltered employment creation that would help the NGOs restore the dignity
and independence of homeless people on the streets of Cape Town
> this worked very well and today we employing around 240 people a year moving around the City
cleaning 120 000 square meters of graffiti – job creation for the homeless and unemployed in indigent
communities, but also cleaning up our graffiti daily!
> for the more specialist work, the City still used a contractor who cleaned a further 29 000 square
meters of graffiti and in so doing created a further 40 jobs
> we have also mobilised neighbourhood watches who have seized this programme with energy – we
sometimes supply the paint, cementwash, brushes and buckets, but often they do this themselves
and in this way they have found a very tangible way to advertise their presence and communicate that
their neighbourhood was now an area where order prevailed > focusing on where their sphere of
control overlaps with their sphere of interest
8 mins
MAIN ATTRACTION!
Business UNusual
> In Cape Town the City’s approach to policing has both involved conventional approaches to
policing, but we have also keenly pursued innovation and business unusual in terms of our
approach to crime prevention and addressing high crime rates in vulnerable communities without the
resources to solve our problems with a large police force
- VPUU (5 mins)
[PREZI 145 - complete slide presentation on SLIDE 18 – N2 gateway housing slide]
> perhaps the single most valuable investment we have made in terms of crime fighting, that is truly
transformational, sustainable and addresses the root causes of crime, has been a City programme
called Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU) – I know it is not the sexiest name and
perhaps if we realised how successful it was going to be, we would have workshopped the name a bit
longer
> VPUU is a joint project between the CoCT, the German Development Bank, the Western Cape
Provincial Government and the National Treasury
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> the goals of the programme are to increase safety, upgrade low-income neighbourhoods and
improve the socio-economic environment through strategic and targeted infrastructure and social
investment
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> this is achieved through the development of a social compact through identifying who the leadership
in the community is and investing in them so that they can become a partner and undertaking
baseline surveys with them to benchmark the current situation
> baseline surveys focus on issues of safety and identifying crime hotspots and the way in which
violent crime manifests itself, as well as understanding the local economy and the extent to which the
City’s service provision is meeting the needs of the community
> and through that process to start prioritising interventions and develop local strategies, followed by
design, implementation and on-going evaluation of the operations and maintenance
> the sustainability of the operations and maintenance is essential
> often the operations and maintenance are neglected and if public infrastructure is not effectively
maintained, it becomes occupied by criminal elements
> this is fundamental to any urban management and crime prevention strategy
> the thing that runs through the whole methodology is community participation
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> the idea is shifting from the historic central administrative system where government played the
primary role in planning, implementation and management and the community played a very limited
role
> normally the City would employ service providers to implement on behalf of government
> the shift we are looking for is to implement partnerships where the communities play a far more
important role with the City supporting and facilitating
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> Example: Site C in Khayelitsha – a highly occupied neighbourhood, 95% coverage, very little urban
management, very high levels of urban crime and a thriving informal economy
> we utilised a methodology called rapid urban appraisal and divided the community up in different
sectors:
> religious groupings, civics, sports bodies, law enforcement agencies – about 15 different sectors
> they were asked to categorise their understanding of crime and to map the out crime and tell stories
about crimes on aerial photographs and in separate workshops
> we then brought these groups together into a reference group and consolidated these maps and
identified where these crime hotspots are and what the issues are that the community would like
addressed from a crime point of view
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> they prioritised crime accordingly: robbery, house breakings, stabbings and rape, crime against
youth and gangs
> we then took the mapping they produced and produced point-density maps with our Geographic
Information System Unit in Council
> what you will see here are a few examples:
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> this is robbery and you will see there is a high incidence of robbery around the railway station, the
taxi rank, certain key intersections, a bridge over the freeway where pedestrians were walking, certain
public facilities, a particular street and a collection of schools
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> the density-map for house-breaking
> again, around the railway station, transport interchanges, along the edge of the freeway where there
are a large number of informal shacks and around certain public facilities,
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> this is the point-density map for murder
> the railway station, taxi rank, bridge over the freeway, certain intersections
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> that is the overall point-density map for all violent crime – the same picture starts to emerge
> So what you are seeing is that there is a high incidence of crime within public space which
government is responsible to maintain and manage and obviously that maintenance and urban
management is not happening
> And therefore you have seen the criminal element have occupied these spaces where there is high
footfall
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> the community identified certain interventions: satellite police stations, community buildings or safe
houses, multi-functional centres, civilian patrols, anti-gender violence programmes, legal aid, facilities,
community exchanges, social development and local economic development
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> then we did a business survey in the area
> it was a comprehensive survey
> I will highlight a couple of key points of interest that arose form it
> we did full coverage of Site C, 10 800 households surveyed, 2079 businesses picked up and
interviewed, 98% of them were interviewed
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> this slide illustrates the distribution of business within Site C, the yellow is retail – this is basically
“spaza shops” in the South African context
> what people are doing, as the slide shows us, is that people are doing business wherever they can
> what this slide also shows us is there is no business zoned land in Site C, so people are doing
business wherever they can in the area – this illustrates how the Apartheid planning is still in place – it
has not been rectified yet
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> then we asked people where they would like to do business, we asked the business people, they
told us: the train station, the taxi rank, important intersections, around various public facilities
> so the business people have identified these same crime hotpots as the places with the greatest
economic potential
> so the challenge from an urban development point of view is how do you partner with the
community and start investing in positively occupying these dangerous spaces with appropriate
development and stimulating the economy of the area, which does have the potential to grow, but at
the moment violent crime is happening in those areas of opportunity and stifling growth
> so what flows from that in the methodology is to start identifying projects in the area
> how do we focus investment in partnership with line departments in Council and the community
within those important spaces of opportunity
> and in this case the public square was identified by the business people as an area of economic
potential, the railway station at Khayelitsha, Mew Way, a prominent transport route between an
informal settlement of 7000 households and shacks, linking them to Khayelitsha CBD
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> so we partnered with line departments
> developed libraries, public squares, youth centres, kick-abouts, sports facilities, lighting, paved
surfaces and proper pedestrian walkways
> and this is a strategic and targeted investment in the community – not an investment which covers
the whole area – it is an investment which has been negotiated with the community
> the best possible investment to start shifting the ownership and control of public space back into the
hands of the community
> and we started by focusing on those areas of highest use
> a few examples of the implementation:
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> that is the sports precinct, with informal sport – in an old detention pond - and formalised sport
around the school with changing rooms with 4 flats overlooking the sports fields
> the rental from the flats pays for the maintenance of the fields
> before VPUU started here, this detention pond area used to have bodies found on it weekly – a bad
crime hotspot in Cape Town
> what has happened is that it has been positively occupied with sports and recreation
> THERE is a small public building just anchoring the intersection between the cycle route and the
main pedestrian walking paths towards the CBD
> the building overlooks in all directions where the movement of traffic is happening and achieves
effective passive surveillance
> that is the building where the neighbourhood patrols are coordinated from, where there is a
community meeting room, where we have a small spaza shop operating from street level and the City
staff are also occupying a part of the building and are available to the public there
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> that is another slide showing the pedestrian foot traffic running through the old stormwater detention
pond – you can see the preferred walking route being walked
> this detention pond is an element within the urban environment which is designed to flood when
there is a lot of rain to prevent the surrounding residential area from flooding and then it will gradually
drain
> now this former dangerous space is also a recreational area for kids – until 11 or 12 o’clock at night
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> this is the forecourt to the station where we are formalising much-needed informal trading
opportunities
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> these are live-work units constructed on the public square which starts to introduce business at
street level, residential on top, so that the residents are overlooking the square and providing passive
surveillance
> through effective environmental design we have introduced safety and reduced the need for policing
> the concept behind this is that we generate a rental income stream through letting out these units to
local business people at a level of affordability where they can enter – not bringing in a big retail
developer and taking the business out of the area
> the rental collected is used to maintain the square
> we are now introducing SUSTAINABLE URBAN MANAGEMENT
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> another public facility on the square which is a house of learning
[SWITCH SLIDE to mosaic makers]
> it is a library, it has an adult basic education facility, a community meeting room, it has 2 floors of
offices for local businesses, NGOs and civic associations and an early childhood development centre
> it is a library like no other the City has ever built before – it is now a house of learning that actually
and actively serves the community
> since opening it has become the second busiest library on the whole City, second only to the Cape
Town Central Library
[SWITCH SLIDE]
> an example of how a strategic investment can develop the youth
> when we look at the analysis of crime in the area, the people most likely to be victims and
perpetrators of crime are young males between the ages of 16 and 24
> a facility like this starts to provide options to them and to occupy them in those hours when they
would otherwise be vulnerable to getting involved in criminal activity
[SWITCH SLIDE – building with bakkie]
> that is the small community building at the intersection of the cycle and pedestrian route
> what you will notice is that this building is not a typical SA government building with barbed wire
fences and palisade fences around it
> it is a building which opens directly out onto the public square and the fact that it is not vandalised
demonstrates the partnership which we have been able to achieve with the community
[SWITCH SLIDE – kids on play equipment]
> the community has taken ownership of it, they control it and they prevent it from being vandalised
> it is looking over the main pedestrian walkaway
[SWITCH SLIDE – view from above]
> that is just going back to show you the bigger picture and how these structures are part of a bigger
design
> a picture from above – what we have created is a Bedouin tent which clips onto the building and
covers the square so that the facility is flexible and accommodate weddings and events
> the World Design Capital judges’ visit to Cape Town was hosted underneath the tent
> they came and chose CT to be WDC2014
[SWITCH SLIDE – astroturf football pitch]
> within that same area, we partnered with FIFA during 2010 and constructed a Football for Hope
Centre, as one of the 20 centres they committed to construct throughout Africa
> the idea is to attract young kids, male and female – through sport – and to give them access
through the facility to life skills, education, counselling, health education and leadership training
> this facility is used every single day of the week and is used as much as 10 grass fields of
competition standard – relatively cheap with low maintenance
> we worked with FIFA, assisted them with the design and funded half of it
[SWITCH SLIDE – advance slide to pic within pic]
> this was part of the legacy of FIFA 2010 and was the first Football for Hope centre built in the world
> FIFA took out of this a model for how such centres could work and they are using this now in Brazil
and elsewhere
> they are looking to establish 5 centres of excellence across the world as a gateway to that continent
and Cape Town has expressed an interest in being that Centre of Excellence for Africa – we have
been in discussion with UN Habitat about this
[SWITCH SLIDE – action plan]
> This is an example of a community action plan
> so generally, if we are looking at an area-based approach, what gets negotiated with the community
are short, medium and long term interventions within the different sectors
> what you will see is central to the action plan is what we call a spatial reconfiguration plan or an
urban design framework
> that is how we start to give order to how investment from government is directed in the community
and its infrastructure
> so, for example, around the square which we looked at earlier, there is a library, a business hub,
live-work units, environmental health centre, community hall and youth centre, a municipal cash office
> so, in a sense, it becomes the one-stop shop for the community and becomes a destination for
locals which unlocks the local economy
> it becomes safer, people are starting to get jobs and it becomes a dignified space
> a turn-around
> a lot of the short-term strategies are about investment in people, supporting early childhood
development, leadership training, woman empowerment, youth related programmes, sports
development, supporting the neighbourhood watch initiatives, achieving sustained operations and
maintenance
> we looked long at the selection of appropriate measurements of success within the community
[SWITCH SLIDE – methodology
> previously the indicators used by the City were quite one-dimensional
> if you were to ask a mother how safe it was for her children to walk from your home to a public
square or to use public transport – we have set ourselves, e.g. the target of increasing this score
annuall.
> to measure all this, we set up a local company in Khayelitsha, called Lithetha, who do 50 household
surveys a week randomly selected
> they are asking all of these questions with respect to people’s safety and the level of service the
City is delivering
> and through that we are able to monitor the extent to which people feel safe, monitor which routes
are dangerous, which routes are becoming safer and we are entering this into a GIS system, which
we are mapping against our indicators
> this strong focus on monitoring and evaluation allows us to prove our successes without dispute and
thereby achieve the buy-in to mainstream the initiatives across the City and across other departments
and directorates
[SWITCH SLIDE – skip through all 6 pics as you speak]
> as part of the monitoring mechanism, we ask the community to take photographs from certain key
points, every month, for the last 6 years of implementation, they are able to monitor physical change
> BUT, they also monitor change in behaviour
> people subconsciously react to how safe they feel in their environment – when we started people
were walking across the detention pond area in groups of 10 and 12 – safety in numbers
> now they are walking individually and in pairs – they are feeling safer and it is safer
> longer term, we are driving bigger infrastructure programmes and to a large extent our focus has
been on things which are shared in the public environment
> our focus has not been on providing houses for people, but on creating walkways, public spaces
where people are gaining access to services
> we need to fix the public good before we start investing in the individual good (e.g. houses, which
have become the South African obsession)
[SWITCH SLIDE – Monwabisi Park top view]
> this is an example in an informal settlement where we are starting in Monwabisi Park, where we
have set up a leadership grouping in whom we have invested a lot of time and money
[SWITCH SLIDE – prioritising interventions]
> in due course, we will be working through the same process here that we did in Kuyasa and Harare
and we hope to have the same effect
VPUU WRAP-UP
>> the message is that if you do proper integrated urban development and investment in both
infrastructure facilities and people and the community, one of the significant outcomes is
safety, along with other subsidiary elements that are needed for job creation, economic
development and social inclusion
>> the reduction in violent crime immediately stimulates the economy as the reduction of
crime makes it more likely that people can do business and invest in business activity
>> if the City can do this is on a wider scale on an area-based approach through other
communities, then we can achieve sustainable safety rather than trying to rely solely on
(conventional) policing
>> VPUU reduced the murder rate by approximately 34% in Khayelitsha as a whole,
which accounts for almost 100% of all murders in the public environment – murders
happening in the domestic environment requires a different set of interventions that
we are also currently running a pilot programme on in a different community
>> this means the PLANNING department of your City has to work with your POLICE and your
SAFETY AND SECURITY departments much more closely, which we are now doing
> BUT, this needs strong champions in their respective roles (social facilitator, planner and designer,
social crime prevention experts, policeman, community activist)
> we have definitely learnt that you need to fix the public good before we start investing in the
individual good
I THANK YOU.
[SKIP MURC – proceed to Ceasefire – if there is time]
- MURC (1 min)
[PREZI 183 - complete slide presentation on SLIDE 17 – SUNSET over Table Bay slide]
> all the lessons we have learnt from VPUU and the CIDs and the need to stabilise communities
before we can achieve serious investment is what underpins the Mayor’s Urban Regeneration
Campaign which mainstreams the successes of VPUU into 12 other nodes across the City
> this sort outs the crime problem through small tweaks in our operating budgets
> as a successful driver of numerous safety and security initiatives, I have learnt that two of the most
successful skills requires under these circumstances fall outside of the normal skillset of policing staff,
namely a social facilitator and a planner/urban designer
> with MURC we have learnt also the value of the Broken Window approach
- Ceasefire (2 mins)
[complete slide presentation]
> OK, so just to briefly refer back to VPUU: around the beginning of a predecessor of the programme,
during an intervention in Tafelsig, which has serious gang violence problems, the staff noticed that on
the days when the soccer league that they had set up played their inter-league soccer games, on
Wednesdays, that the violent crime virtually reduced to zero
> the infrastructure development followed and the legacy of that is now visible in the Mitchells Plain
Town Centre and surrounding area
> a similar “ah ha” moment was experienced by Dr. Gary Slutkin in his work in the hospitals in
Chicago in the USA
> when I first saw the methodology by Dr. Slutkin, it clicked with me immediately
>> treat gang violence as an epidemic > an epidemiological approach to violent crime
> it rang an immediate bell with me
> US Dept. of State arranged for him to come visit us
> we agreed on a pilot project in Hanover Park which had been crippled by gang violence during the
preceding years, but had seen an intolerable spike in killings during the preceding 6 months
> we arranged repeated training for the violence interruptors and the outreach workers we deployed in
Hanover park
> and the results speaks for themselves!