Mogale relaunches fight against drugs
"The state of the inner city has reached a point where serious intervention is required."
Michael Holenstein, the Executive Mayor of Mogale City, has officially relaunched the Rejuvenation of the Inner City Project (RICP) and promised that the project will ensure the improvement of the City over the next few years.
“The state of the inner city has reached a point where serious intervention is required,” Holenstein said at the relaunch of the project on Friday, 24 February. The initial project was devised and launched by former Executive Mayor of Mogale City, Lynn Pannall, in 2016, but it came to an end after she resigned due to ill health.
Holenstein said further, “Krugersdorp has the potential to be a vibrant and opportunity-filled city, but due to the number of dilapidated buildings, drug-related activities such as prostitution, illegal connections and high poverty rates in the city, job creation and community safety have taken a back seat. This is why we have relaunched the project”.
He attributed the high prostitution and drug rates to the large number of buildings that have been hijacked or taken over by suspected criminals.
Holenstein said the buildings pose a threat to residents as they are used as drug houses and/ or brothels.
“We intend to serve the residents of these buildings with notices of eviction, and either demolish or renovate these buildings.”
The team in charge of the project was formerly known as the Drug and Prostitution Task team, but was renamed Mogale City Crime Forum (MCCF) to expand its mandate to issues such as illegal dumping, illegal vending, vandalism, etc.
Holenstein has appointed Dr Fay Hodza as chairperson of the MCCF, and expressed confidence in his ability to deal successfully with the issues the city faces.
Hodza defined the project as one centred on the ‘broken window’ approach to crime: disorder and incivility lead to increased occurrences of serious crimes. He said the team will focus on removing all markers of physical and social disorder to aid in rejuvenating the city. These disorderly markers include public drinking, street prostitution and drug usage.
“In 2017 our efforts will be focused on reversing inner city decay by engaging in cleaning-up and education campaigns,” said Hodza.
Details of the programmes will be released soon.
Another stakeholder involved in the project is the well-known Community Policing Forum (CPF). Gert Jonker, who was the former chairperson of MCCF and is now the chairperson of Krugersdorp CPF said recent surveys have pointed out that the majority of South Africans feel unsafe in their own country.
“They are scared to walk alone and express mistrust in law enforcement capabilities,” he said. The CPF is an entity that will synchronise the combined activities of various law enforcement and local government agencies and the public, to unlock a synergy between them and optimise their efforts to prevent and detect crime.
“It is imperative that initiatives such as the Mogale City Crime Forum not only restore faith in the police and the courts, but also empower community members to take back their streets and suburbs from criminals,” said Jonker.
Holenstein added that positive change would inspire private sector investments and in turn, ensure that people get a return on their investment in the city. He called it the ‘ripple-effect approach’. “I call on all business owners and community members to support and become a part of this initiative,” he said. “We will not only tackle the drugs and prostitution problem in Krugersdorp head-on, but we will open our inner city for development. I and my team of MMCs working alongside all the relevant stakeholders will ensure that Mogale City becomes a model municipality. This is a tremendous undertaking, but we owe it to our youth, our many unemployed residents and the poor to tackle these issues head-on.”
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