Protesters say R100m for ‘police station for whites’ unacceptable

A protest took place in Cape Town at the SA Police Service (SAPS) provincial office on Tuesday against the alleged proposed spending of R100 million on a police station in Muizenberg, Western Cape, which the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) describes as a “white, middle class area”.

The SJC describes itself as a “mass-based social movement campaigning for the advancement of basic rights for those living in informal settlements in South Africa”.

It was founded in Cape Town in 2008 “as a response to the xenophobic violence of the time. The majority of our work has focused on improving access to safety and justice in Khayelitsha’s informal settlements.”

They said in a statement that they were opposed to the planned changes to the police station in Muizenberg that are slated to cost R100 million.

“For too long the SAPS has prioritised police resources to mainly white, middle class areas and discriminated against areas where black people live.”

They alleged that “black African and Coloured communities are ignored and discriminated against. Yet, it is these communities that suffer by far the highest burden of crime.”

“Nyanga and Khayelitsha for example are among the most dangerous areas in the country, with some of the highest number of murder rates recorded annually anywhere in South Africa. In 2015/16 Nyanga had 10 times more murders than Muizenberg. Over the same period Site B, Khayelitsha had 4 times more robberies with aggravating circumstances, while Harare, Khayelitsha, had three times more total contact crimes than Muizenberg.

“In spite of these numbers, police stations in Nyanga and Khayelitsha and other similarly placed communities continue to operate with limited infrastructure and insufficient resources.”

They listed a number of alleged failures in resourcing the police:

“In 2015/2016 SAPS failed to meet its own target of identifying and procuring land for a second police station in Nyanga. This was the third year in which they had set and failed to meet this target. All levels of government now have a responsibility to find and make land available for the construction of this very necessary additional police station.

“In 2004 SAPS promised that the Makhaza Police Station in Khayelitsha was a priority that would be built. Thirteen years later SAPS again committed to the construction of the station indicating that construction is scheduled for 2018/2019. In spite of this it has been reported that the department of public works, who will be responsible for construction, isn’t even aware of this commitment.

“All three police precincts in Khayelitsha, which serve 414 184 people altogether, have only one Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) Unit between them.

“In Nyanga the lack of resources and a lack of physical infrastructure and space is similarly dire. Despite serving a community of 213 631 people, Nyanga’s FCS Unit is housed at the Mitchell’s Plain Police Station, which is 10km away. The detectives deployed to Nyanga are also not stationed at the Nyanga Police Station. They occupy office space 9km away.

“The working class black African and Coloured community of Vrygrond, that is included in the Muizenberg police precinct is more than 6km away from the Muizenberg Police Station. There are only two routes to get from Vrygrond to Muizenberg – either a pedestrian bridge or a bridge for motor vehicles.

“The Lingelethu-West Police Station in Khayelitsha, according to the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry into Policing, has “poor parking facilities, no holding cells, no exhibit store, inadequate space for detectives, a temporary “park home” for the victim friendly room, and no space for holding “parades”.” None of these requirements has been addressed and the latest SAPS Annual Report reveals that no capital investments are in the pipeline. To make matters worse in 2016 the City of Cape Town proposed to sell the vacant land directly adjacent to the Lingelethu West Police Station. The SJC objected, arguing the land should be reserved for the necessary expansion of the police station.

“Masiphumelele, that falls within the Ocean View police precinct, is 4kmsaway from the police station. In November 2015 it received a mobile police station. Four months later the mobile police station was declared unroadworthy. It took more than 2 months for the repairs to be done.”

They added that mobile and satellite police stations were almost exclusively reserved for poor, working-class black African communities such as Mfuleni, Site B, Khayelitsha and Masiphumelele.

The movement said that they, together with Equal Education and the Nyanga Community Police Forum, felt it was necessary to take the minister of police, the acting national police commissioner and the Western Cape provincial police commissioner to the Equality Court since “the allocation of resources by SAPS is clearly inequitable and discriminatory”.

Their protest on Tuesday was for the SAPS to divert “the bigger share of the R100 million infrastructure budget allocated to the Muizenberg Police Station to communities that are in dire need, including those of Vrygrond, Nyanga, Khayelitsha, and others.”

Have a look at a video of the protest below.