Fighting crime without pay

More than 80 young people of KwaThema say they will continue fighting crime in their township.

These young people are working without expecting to get paid at the end of the month.

They leave their warm and loving families every day, irrespective of weather conditions, to voluntarily ensure the safety of KwaThema residents.

These young people came together in 2010 and formed the KwaThema patrollers’ group and work closely with the KwaThema police to help create a crime-free zone in their society.

Freddy Nhlengethwa, patrollers’ commander, says irrespective of the situations that they are forced to work under, they will continue to fight against crime in the area.

Nhlengethwa explains that one of the challenges that they are faced with is some of the learners refusing to be searched before entering school premises to ensure the learners’ and teachers’ safety at school.

“Some of the learners become aggressive and disrespectful which makes our job difficult, however, no learner goes inside the school premises without being searched,” he says.

Nhlengethwa adds that despite the fact that they have made many arrests in the township and also helped the police in a fight against drug abuse, they need equipment that will help them do their work more effectively.

“We need equipment such as a patrolling uniform and security radios to help us communicate all the time when on duty.”

Zanele Hlabathi, one of the patrollers, says she joined the patrollers to assist in fighting against crime.

“We believe that crime is committed by young people and that it will take the youth to fight and win the battle against crime,” says Hlabathi.

She encourages other young people to join the patrollers to protect the KwaThema residents against criminals.