Aubrey Robinson, community leader, Retreat
Cafda Village, Retreat is under siege by gangsters, while hundreds of thousands of rand have been spent on CCTV cameras that are still not connected to any control room.
Innocents are being killed and injured because of trigger-happy gangsters. How many more of our residents must die before action is taken by our security agencies and government?
Those CCTV cameras which are not connected to any control room are of no use to our community who are at the mercy of these gangsters.
The police know who these guys are as they are the regular shooters killing our people. I can also understand why our people don’t want to be witnesses or give statements, but I also know that without that, the guilty go free.
Our community is intimidated with death by these gangsters, but residents fear going to the police because they suspect some of the officers are working with the gangsters.
When the Anti-Gang Unit and other security agencies entered our area they manhandled all the wrong people while these gangsters walked past them.
It’s my plea as an independent candidate and community leader that something urgently needs to be done to stop these shootings. Our youth are targeted by these gangsters and forced to join them.
We don’t have one single programme or project going which can motivate our youth to look the other way.
We all know the gangsters’ income is from selling drugs, and they fight each other over drug turf. We all know who the sellers are and their addresses yet they make money killing our youth while we are idle.
The area has become like a desert where everything has dried up and Covid-19 is used as an excuse for inaction.
We need SAPS intelligence, the local government and our community police forum to put their resources together to combat these shootings and the killing of our innocent residents. Let’s work together.
Steenberg police spokesman Sergeant Wesley Twigg, responds: Station commander, Colonel Jan Alexander, of Steenberg SAPS, will not respond to the comments made in (Mr Robinson’s) email.