Making Melville a smart village
In recent years, due to an increase in crime levels, Melville has lost many restaurants as well as a number of guesthouses.

If you are a member of the Melville community, you now know of the Melville Security Initiative (MSI).
A project that was initially started in 2009 by the Melville Resident’s Association with the goal of maintaining and implementing security solutions for the safety and security of the community.
Though the initiative, which is a non-profit organisation, now has new faces, its goal is still resolute, to make sure those who live in and visit the community are safe. In 2019 a new project was afoot, called Melville Safe Streets. The paper sat down with some of the initiative’s volunteers to find out more about their big, but achievable plan to make Melville safer and it needs your support to make it all happen.
The organisation’s director, Herman de Lange described the project as one that aims to put in place traffic control solutions with an emphasis on safety.
Covid-19 halted plans for this project for some time but eventually, a traffic study was done and showed its measures to be practical following which a feasibility test was done that showed it would not be expensive for households to contribute towards.
The third aspect of this project is to get people within the designated boundaries such as Melville, Auckland Park North, parts of Kingsway Avenue and Richmond, on board with the idea.
So far only 600 people have signed the petition in support of the project and, even though this is a good number, there are still about 1 300 signatures from households and businesses that have not come forward. For this project to stand a chance of fruition, there needs to be two-thirds support of it before the application process with the City can get going.
Volunteers, Danyle Nunes, Melissa Carrington and Roberto Denkinger agreed with sentiments shared by De Lange who pointed out this is not an MSI project but rather a community one, “Melville is such a beautiful, unique village but they also want to move it to a smart village,” he said.
“We need to open up the suburb and make it a safe space where people can explore,” said Nunes.
He explained how the Melville Residents Association is working with businesses to loop Melville into the Red Bus Tour, “But how do we start dropping off a busload of tourists in a suburb that I would define as crime-ridden?” he asked.
He added that should Melville take up the responsibility of bringing tourists within the area, these tourists would need to be safeguarded so they will always want to come back.
The initiative’s plan is to make it safer by adding about four non-intrusive entry points with the use of a boom system equipped with a camera, a pedestrian access gate, a few permanent road closures and a 24-hour manned access gate, to name a few. “With this, we making it so these criminals cannot just drive out, they’d have to be a little sharper and so we hope this will potentially slow this down and discourage them from coming in,” said De Lange.
In recent years, due to an increase in crime levels, Melville has lost many restaurants as well as a number of guesthouses.
For Denkinger the safety of Melville is important as he has lived there for 34 years, all his life, and even after travelling the world he has found no place that comes close to how he feels about his home, “Melville people are accepting and they are approachable, they warm and expressive, I am a creative so I am in the right place, why wouldn’t I support this project?”
Though the team recognises that Melville has never been perfect, it is the ease of knowing you are in a safe community that to bring back.
Details: Melville Security Initiative safestreets@ilovemelville.co.za