UJ’s community initiative for World Social Work Day

Fourth year social work students of the University of Johannesburg (UJ) took good advantage of World Social Work Day on 18 March to create awareness about the importance of getting involved in issues of safety and security around the university’s campuses.

More than ten different groups of students managed activities geared towards exposing how they and their peers can help counter the normalization of crime in the communities they live and study in. UJ’s Soweto and Joubert Park campuses also had events, but most of the activity happened in Brixton and Westdene – the home to many student communes.

“We are raising awareness about community safety, especially in the areas students live in,” Xoliswa Mtshali told Northcliff Melville TImes at the ‘Whistleblowers Short Walk to Safety’ from Putney Road in Brixton to UJ’s Kingsway campus. “We should be more integrated into the community so that residents can see that we care about what happens here.”

Lecturer in the social work department and Westdene resident Marlene de Beer said the student-based projects were initiated in reaction to the incidents of crime around UJ’s Kingsway campus last year. Students are continuously the target of robberies on their way to class or home, a man was shot in a carjacking at Putney and Ripley Roads on 2 November  and, even worse, a student was killed in after being knocked down by a speeding car trying to evade the police on 22 November.

Already this year a female student from the Eastern Cape was attacked on her first day at UJ by a man caught fleeing on closed-circuit camera.

The Bachelor of Social Work candidates engaged the Brixton police, Community Protection Forum (CPF) and other private protection services at the ‘Community Safety Awareness’ campaign held at the Brixton Recreation Centre (BRC).

“In our assessment we noticed the typical view was that many people didn’t really want to stay in Brixton because of the crime,” said Patrick Khoza, a member of the group at the BRC. “We just want to restore safety, work with the community security initiatives and have the police and other advisors give us guidance.”

Details: UJ department of social work