Roegshanda Pascoe of the Western Cape Safety Forum took to Facebook on Sunday to voice her anger after the ANC launched an anti-crime campaign last week.
She says along with community leaders across Cape Town, the forum wrote a memorandum several months ago to Police Minister Fikile Mbalula calling for an intervention into the ongoing crime problems in the Western Cape.
“At the time there was lots of gang violence in Hanover Park and Manenberg and also the child rapes and murders. So we decided we must come together as a collective and we had a march,” Pascoe says.
She says several months passed with no feedback, until last week when they were contacted by the civilian secretariat of police.
Pascoe says they went armed with their memorandum, which lists 10 solutions to crime problems, and presented it.
“At the meeting they said let us agree that in good faith we won’t go to the press with this. In principle we agreed because we were only introducing our plans, and resolutions must still be taken. We agreed to issue a joint statement when we are ready.”
However, she says two days later the ANC held a press conference in Cape Town to launch their Safety Signature Campaign, and the forum got a skrik when they saw how similar it was to their presentation.
On Facebook, Pascoe wrote: “Just to read on Facebook that the ANC have come up with this beautiful plan of which is in fact our memorandum and what we did in the meeting was explaining in detail what all these points are saying.”
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According to the ANC, they have noted the “explosion of violent crime and gangsterism inflicted on the people of the Western Cape”, and called on national government to intervene.
“Policing in the Western Cape leaves much to be desired as SAPS and the Metro Police do not have the ability to manage the spate of crimes effectively in the province nor can they assure the residents of the Western Cape that we are on a path to peace in our communities. Instead, we have seen the number of violent crimes increase,” it said.
The campaign calls, among others, for corrupt police to be removed, and schools to be made safer.
On Monday ANC provincial secretary, Faiez Jacobs, denied that they copied the Western Cape Safety Forum’s memorandum.
He says various ANC branches had been working on the campaign for weeks.
“We did not copy theirs, the issues raised may be similar but the ANC has its own intelligence,” he says.
But Pascoe queried the timing of the campaign launch.
“We had our meeting on Tuesday and they had their press conference on Thursday. We are not stupid,” she says.