By Loushe Jordaan Gilbert

The community of Hanover Park is reeling following the murder of a 6-year-old child and the sporadic flare up of crime in the area. Thus, various organisations, including religious fraternities embarked on a prayer walk on Sunday out of desperation to restore peace in the area.

Speaking on VOC Breakfast on Monday morning, Community Policing Forum (CPF) spokesperson and community activist Yaseen Johaar said the idea behind the prayer walk was to merge various religious clergies to fight crime from a spiritual aspect.

“Before we tackle the issues we face, we know that we first need to get guidance from Allah (God), and this applies to all faiths. We cannot get anywhere if we don’t put Allah at the center of what we want to do, and for this reason we wanted to merge various religions and break those invisible barriers to stand united on all fronts,” he said.

Johaar said fighting crime was a daunting task, but what makes it even more difficult is the in fighting, the fact that everyone is pushing their own agenda and because unity is what everyone is calling for, but it’s not evident in actions.

“Fighting crime is not just a Hanover Park issue, it is a Cape Flats issue. Many of our surrounding areas are faced with the same war we are trying to fight, and we can’t achieve anything if we don’t all stand together and show these criminals or bad elements in our community that we are fed up and we are against the innocent killings of children, we want our children to live in peace without fear,” he stated.

Johaar said they (CPF’s and communities) should push harder to get more people involved in initiatives like this this. He said the more people attend; the more voices are calling for an end to these inhumane living conditions.