The community should not become fearful or panic ahead of Monday’s national shutdown as called for by the Economic Freedom Fighters, this was the message from SAPS Mayville Community Police Forum chairperson, Imtiaz Syed.
Syed addressed a crowd of about 100 people outside a filling station in Overport to enlighten the community about expectations of the shutdown.
“This is a national shutdown. It is not a protest,” said Syed. He advised that people should be weary of misinformation that could filter through on WhatsApp groups and other social media platforms.
In the meantime, Syed further spoke on the Community in Blue (CIB) initiative that would assist SAPS and the CPF in crime prevention methods. He said that the CIB works with SAPS as a “force multiplier” to assist where needed and when called on by the police. He was clear that members were not vigilantes and had to follow the strict guidelines as laid out in the CIB policy.
Syed spoke to the crowd about what strategy would be put in place by SAPS ahead of the national shutdown. “What are the actions on the side of SAPS and the community and how then do we mobilise? If you remember correctly the unrest, it was everyone to themselves and everyone did whatever they thought was in the best interest of the community which worked fine. So, this is not a meeting to analyse and overthink things because we are not sure what is going to happen.”
Syed said that people could not sit and plan for an unrest when it was not known if an unrest was going to happen. “We are not even sure whether the national shutdown is actually going to be more effective at all in this area. With that we are saying that we need to organize, we need to mobilise and we need you to be ready in case anything happens.”
Speaking on force multipliers, Syed defined the sectors that fall under the SAPS Mayville precinct. He said that in order for the community to be out and to be working with SAPS, you are going to have to be a CIB member.
He explained the processes and procedures on to become a CIB member.
He said that this time around the police are coming in prepared, they have forces and hotspots have been identified. These hotspots include the Bellair and Jan Smuts intersection and the other is in and around the Puntan’s Hill informal settlement. “Other than that it is the M3 and M2 coming in and out in the Intersite area that falls under the Sydenham station area.
“What do we do as communities? There have been questions coming through on what to do. We say that there is nothing to do because we don’t know what is going to happen, but ultimately when something does happen, we need to be ready and prepared enough to stand up and come out.
A specific Ward 31 CIB WhatsApp group has been initiated as a start. This group will serve to register CIB members as well as bring accurate updates on matters building up to the 20 March shut down. Syed reiterated that it was not a national unrest, but a shutdown as called for by the EFF.
The CPF hosted a meeting with the business sector on Wednesday, 15 March, to analyse and assess what they are doing from their side in terms of safety and security around their businesses because they cannot really rely on the community to look after their businesses that they currently run within the area.
“If all of us do the same thing at the same time, it becomes effective. When there are protests that happen, the basic concept of it is numbers. If for example you are in a particular area and there is something happening where you are and we are all out at the same time, then there are many hands that will come out and assist you in terms of an unrest.
“If we gather enough numbers being out there without being racist, without being volatile, without being vigilantes, but just by showing presence, we then tend to push them back and say this is not going to happen in this area. Again, vigilantism is a no-no. During the last unrest we saw many things happen. All of those happened because we were in fear. Understandably so. This time we got to be more prepared. Remember, we live in a democracy. We cannot run this in something that it is not wanted. The more we escalate these things, the worse it is going to become for us. Our purpose is to make sure that there is no violence. Not from us and not from anyone else,” said Syed.
