Intro for News Mag

Intoduction for News Magazine


Saskia Kuiper

‘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.