By Loushe Jordaan Gilbert

With the continued outcry over the bloodshed on the Cape Flats, the Mitchells Plain CPF cluster believes violent crimes on the Cape flats have reached crisis point.

Members of various CPF’s gathered at Gardendale High School in Athlone on Saturday for a crime summit to formulate a plan to curb the scourge of violent crimes that has been plaguing various communities.

The meeting was chaired by the Mitchells Plain cluster and was called to engage the broader community on the ever-increasing murder rate in the province.

“The important part was to get the people from various communities at one location to discuss which crimes affect their community the most and what they feel should be done to bring the perpetrators to book,” said Lentegeur CPF spokesperson Byron De Villiers

“There were quite a few topics of conversation and the provincial call for the South African Defence Force to be deployed was one of those issues,” he added.

De Villiers said a plan of action will be finalized next weekend.

“At this moment, I can’t divulge on what was discussed at the meeting because we decided as a collective to convene in seven days to decide what form of action we will take, but what I can say is the action that will be taken has been thoroughly discussed and everyone who was present at the crime summit is in agreement,” he stated.

Police in the Western Cape has since initiated a 72-hour action plan following several shooting incidents in the Philippi East area this weekend in which eleven people were killed.

“On Friday night at 10:55pm, six women aged between 18 and 26 were shot and killed at a residence in 25h Crescent in Marcus Garvey, Philippi East, by unknown suspects who are yet to be arrested,” said police spokesperson FC Van Wyk.

“On Saturday evening on two separate incidents five men aged between 18 and 36 years old were shot and killed on while other person was left injured. The motive for this incident is being investigated,” he said.

Van Wyk said detectives with crime intelligence are hard at work following leads that could result in the arrest of the perpetrators of these incidents.

In another incident two people were shot and killed in Hanover Park. The circumstances surrounding the murders are unknown and an investigation has since been launched.

Acting Chairperson of the Western Cape CPF board Fransina Lukas said they wanted to meet with Police Minister Bheki Cele again this week to discuss the high number of murders.

“That tells us that something is wrong, that police cannot continue with implementing the anti-crime strategies as they’ve been doing until now and that it’s not working.”

The Western Cape Community Safety Department said between November 2018 and May 2019, there were already more than 2,300 murders recorded in the province, of which the majority was gang related.

Premier Alan Winde recently revealed that 331 murders were recorded in the province in May.

VOC