Dear Lionel Greenberg
As stated that you urge residents to work with you to ensure adequate services are rendered, I have decided to take a stance and bring forth my perspective.
It’s great that you’d like to tackle the most pressing issues affecting residents in the ward and my family, friends and I are truly grateful to this, however, I feel that some of the issues being tackled are not the pressing issues that are truly affecting residents. Moreover, some of them don’t even seem to be dealt with.
As stated in the vision, you cited lawlessness, youth unemployment and the housing project in Sandringham, as well as the recent power outages that affected residents in the north-eastern suburbs.
For example, one of the issues dealt with recently has been giving parking tickets to the mothers rushing to provide their family with protein from a shop called Moishes on a Friday afternoon.
Rightfully so, lawlessness should be dealt with in good time. But first things first, what about the recent hold-ups and hijacks? I had a man grab my leg from within my car, my boyfriend’s and brothers’ cars were nearly hijacked and they took everything in the cars and destroyed them, my brother’s father-in-law was held up twice in one week and now he is left with nothing. My friend’s house was broken into and the trauma of guns held to their heads cannot be erased. Why do the residents need to walk the streets in fear or have to drive with the windows shut and doors locked? Why do our children need to go to sleep behind walls with an electric fence and still not feel safe?
What about the lawlessness on the roads? Having taxis drive through stop streets or red robots, causing accidents, and then someone has to face the mothers of the children that were in the taxi and tell them that they’ve just lost a child. It’s happened to me a few times that I could not cross the road when it was my right of way because, luckily, I saw the taxi speeding through the stop street.
What about the weekly power outages? Work is put on hold, clients are cancelled, and workers lose income and mothers cannot cook supper for their hungry children.
All of this is keeping out tourists, chasing away our fellow South Africans and weakening the rand. All the newly married couples are forced to leave their parents because they can’t face the wrecked country South Africa is heading to become in 20 years’ time. How can they bring up children in such an unsafe country?
Thus, regarding the Sizwe housing project, we should ensure the deaths and damage caused by crime are recognised and prevented.
* Ed’s note: This letter has been edited
