Feedback report on the project

By Laea Medley, Saskia Kuiper and Warrick Smith

‘Xhasa’ – support. During our engagement with the communities of both Fingo Village and Vukani we identified the issue of ‘Misplaced authority’ as a serious factor/cause of crime. The communities both lack visible and reliable sources of information and help in a crisis. Our main aim with our project was to identify the key players in the community, find out what role they played and hold them accountable to this role. This wasn’t an easy task. Many of the people we spoke to presented themselves as Community Policing Forum (CPF) members when they didn’t hold the title. This made it difficult to find out exactly who was on the CPF and whether or not they were doing their job. The communities’ major need is support both from each other, the CPF and the police to help combat and get on top of crime.

We also met with the police, who initially, were helpful and offered complaints about the community and defences for their lack of action. However, once things got down to performance and attendance, the police were nowhere to be seen. This goes for many community members too. The first few meetings we had, aimed specifically at finding out the problems, etc were very fruitful with members actually showing up and voicing their complaints. However, the next few meetings which, aimed at finding solutions and getting down to the dirty work, were literally NOT attended. We struggled to understand this, was it a) an apathy to the situation, or b) a fear for the consequences of attendance. With regards to b) a fear for the consequences of attendance, the community is riddled with the fear of two families, namely Nikelo and Ayanda. These two families have a long history of violence and abuse towards each other and have unfortunately roped in the whole community into their ‘family feud’. The result of this has been a community run by two families who are constantly in and out of jail. Not promising or reliable heads.

Our aim has been to firstly elect and clarify who exactly the CPF are and to get their pictures on a poster and out to the community. It is vital the community know who to contact if they have problems and to hold them accountable if they don’t perform their job. Our second solution is to educate the community on what their rights are, especially as a victim of crime and to make sure they know them comprehensively and exercise them confidently. We have also had meetings with the police and sent an open letter to them to make them aware of the problems the community is having with them. Their job is to protect the communities and we are making sure this is firstly their main priority and secondly they are held accountable by the community if they don’t.

The problems with crime in the Vukani area seem to stem from the lack of visibility of the CPF, and the lack of help from the police, which is reciprocated with a lack of participation from the community. We found that the majority of the community, as well as the police, are apathetic towards issues of crime, and only a few members take the initiative to be active CPF members and fight against crime.

We discovered that a “family feud” was taking place in Vukani, between the families of Michael Nikelo and Ayanda Georgela. The issues between the families are personal, but because violence is used as a way of solving these issues, they affect the whole community. Community members have been forced to choose sides, turning a family feud into a community war. The families want power, and as many supporters as possible.

The Nikelo – Georgela feud has affected not only the safety of community members, but also positions of authority that certain community members hold. At a community meeting, to which about one hundred people attended, a man representing Nikelo spoke to crowd about Nikelo’s arrest that morning, and called people to march to the Magistrate’s court, demanding his freedom. Many people at the meeting then began asking if Nikelo’s representative was a member of the CPF, and if not, who is. They wanted to know who was in charge of protecting them, and how these people are elected.

It was clear from this meeting that even though there may be a CPF in existence, the community is not familiar with its members, meaning that they don’t know who to go to with problems relating to crime. As a result, other people in the community, such as Nikelo and Georgela, claim to be members of the CPF, demanding that people listen to them, and promising protection from crime. The issue of misplaced authority results in community members not knowing who to trust.

In an attempt to solve the issue of misplaced authority in Vukani, we arranged to meet with members of the community, members of the CPF, and a few police officers. The meeting was initially arranged by the CPF and the police, and was intended to host a discussion on the problems of crime in Vukani and Fingo Village. We had arranged to attend this meeting, and hoped to show them some of our media outputs, in an attempt to create an awareness of what we had discovered in the past few weeks. However, when we arrived at the venue, no one was there, and the doors were locked. Prior to this, we received a phone call from the police, informing us that some police officers would not be attending the meeting, as it was being held on a Sunday, a day when they enjoyed getting drunk.

We concluded that lack of participation in community meetings was a clear indication of apathy amongst community members, CPF members, and the police. We found that many people were more than willing to speak to us about their concerns with crime, but when it came to doing something about it, no one could be found.

Having carried out our CMP work in Vukani and Fingo Village, we came up with a few possible solutions to the crime situation in these areas

From a television perspective, we focused on the ongoing family feud between Nikelo and Ayanda. We looked at ways in which we could control the violence resulting from this feud and bring peace. We highlighted the problem by producing a number of videos which captured both sides of the story. The aim of these videos was to reach reconciliation between the two families and end the violence surrounding them.

The sound-slides we put together focussed both on Fingo Village and Vukani, with a short sound-slide describing facets of a march, which was intended to keep Ayanda in jail. The Fingo Village sound-slide focussed on a woman and her daughter and their problems in the area, with regards to rape, assault, and theft. Through the emphasis on this sound-slide, we hope people will recognise the devastation which crime causes in the community and rally together to stop it.

From a print perspective, we published various articles informing the communities of their rights and safety measures. We distributed brochures at our community meeting, and ensured they were in both English and Xhosa. We found that many people had no understanding of what they were entitled to in terms of police enforcement. This is due to an overwhelming fear from the people of identifying criminals in the surrounding areas. With the brochures we also distributed flyers in English and Xhosa which explained the emergency procedures to take when contacting the police.

The second factor which introduced was the distribution of posters which will assist the community by pointing out measures to take in emergency procedures. We also tried to inform the community members of who the CPF members were. The police, who had this information, offered to help us, but failed to come through.

We also will be handing out a feedback report to the community stakeholders in the form a news magazine. Our aim through the news magazine is to inform the community of our findings, and to offer them viable solutions.

We also hope to bring the two families together in one room, where they can talk about the issues between them, and hopefully come to some sort of reconciliation.

As a multimedia team, we aimed to create more community meetings, bringing unity within the areas in order for people to voice their concerns about crime or other issues. This was done to gain better community involvement in the area as well as to form strong bonds with the police and the community.

As a group, we chose to also write an open letter explaining the lack of enthusiasm and interest towards protection and crime-fighting in the respective areas. We found that the police had no direct interest in assisting the people of Vukani and Fingo or assisting us as journalists in our attempt to benefit the area. We have tried to rectify this by encouraging greater cohesion between the police and the community in fighting crime as a unified entity. Through this letter, we hope to erase police apathy and create greater awareness for the community.