The Manenberg Safety Forum’s ‘mini-imbizo’ with several key Western Cape governmental departments went ahead as planned, despite the area witnessing a flare-up in gang violence on Monday. The meeting addressed many of the issues currently affecting the Manenberg community, as well as the Forum’s own plans to tackle them. On the agenda were issues pertaining to social welfare, healthcare, gang violence and infrastructure amongst others.

The new wave of violence reportedly broke out around 8:10am on Monday morning, sparked by an apparent disagreement between two rival gangs. The incident resulted in the deaths of two individuals. Coupled with load shedding in the area, Forum chairperson Roegshanda Pascoe said she was surprised that the event yielded a turnout of roughly 70 community members.

The imbizo was also well attended by representatives of the respective local governmental departments. Pascoe said it would have been excusable had many of the attentions been diverted from the meeting, especially considering the on-going search for a missing Hanover Park girl, Sasha Lee November. Amongst those departments present were Human Settlements, Community, Safety, Education, as well as several representatives from the local SAPS.

“The conclusion to this imbizo was that within 14 days we want a response back from (them) on our findings. This is the position we are taking and it was very nice because when I requested the representatives to say something, the message came clear that they were there to listen and not give input,” she highlighted.

She hailed the positive responses from those in attendance, making special mention of the Community Safety representative, who had vowed to take notes from the meeting and report back to her seniors within the department.

“Just last week Mr Dan Plato was in Manenberg, and she said that a lot of the same things were coming afore. She also said she would hand over those notes and see that it gets looked at and addressed,” explained Pascoe.

Manenberg has long been beset with gang violence issues, a major contributing factor behind the imbizo. And whilst shootings were continuing in the area, Pascoe said the gangster had largely adhered to calls to limit violence in and around the venue in question.

She also attributed the area’s problems to a lack of dignity on the part of residents, in large parts due to the difficult circumstances they face on a daily basis in the area.

“People in Manenberg don’t have respect for each other anymore. Why? Because we have been treated like animals for far too long. What the imbizo focused on last night was to rebuild Manenberg, but that is not going to happen overnight,” she added. VOC (Mubeen Banderker)