If we are to fix South Africa we need to stem the tide of violence. Violence that is committed in our homes and on the streets. Gender-based violence. Gang-related violence. Violence committed by security force members meant to uphold the peace.
On the last weekend in February, six people were shot dead in Mitchell's Plain. In March, Human Rights month, Hanover Park families kept their children indoors as gangsters ran amok. Victims of this violence included a 14-year-old boy. Another 14-year-old narrowly escaped with his life.
In Johannesburg, police fired rubber bullets at protesting students, killing a passer-by.
If we are going to stem the tide of violence in our society we need to shift our thinking away from the idea that the only tool to fix it are more and better-trained police.
If we are going to stem the violence we must develop our self-respect and respect for others.
We need to stop talking about social interventions and actually fund and implement them.
We need to stop funding gimmicks such as the shotstopper technology introduced by the City of Cape Town at great expense that enabled the city to listen in to gunfire but had no impact on stopping violence.
We need to use our resources better, including our community resources. We need more social workers, more drug rehabilitation programmes, more recreational facilities for young people, more academic support for children struggling at school, and much more support for community-based organisations and interventions.
We need all spheres of government, but particularly local government, to finally abandon the apartheid level of maintaining our townships and ghettoes and recognise the necessity to develop better serviced communities. Integrated, sustainable communities.
Communities which feel it's worth their while investing in a nation we'd all like to live in.
Communities in which our children's dreams of better lives aren't daily shattered by a random bullet, or the violence of mere survival on the poverty side of the tracks in one of the most unequal countries in the world.
There is no place for violence in a society built on a foundation of justice for all: Social justice, economic justice, environmental and spatial justice. Those are the four pillars on which GOOD's policy stands.
We know that fixing our communities and our country cannot be achieved overnight. But we can immediately begin gathering the necessary ingredients to meet the challenge sustainably. We can immediately begin revising budget planning by setting the community development goals and targets we must meet.
We can immediately begin to re-imagine a new approach to peace and security.
It's urgent. In the short-term we are going to have to continue our disproportionate and unfair dependence on the police to prevent our descending into chaos. This is unfair on both us and the police.
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