Philippi adds its woes on stats

While Nyanga police station has recorded the highest number of murders in the country, the Philippi East police station has alone recorded an alarming increase of 55 additional killings, up from 150 last year.

In fact, the latest figures have painted a shameful image for the station and its residents.

Over a three year period, the station’s murder average has increased to 159 a year from 60 over an eight year period.

And the recent figures have called for a concerted effort in the greater Nyanga area to root out the scourge of crime.

Nyanga Community Policing Forum chairperson Martin Makasi urged various community stakeholders to come on board and arrest the situation. He cited staff shortage and lack of resources as some of the contributing factors.

“As the CPF we endorse the proposal of the Deputy Minister of Police Bongani Mkongi to conduct a research and find out the main reason behind the killings and how can we reinforce strategies to fight it,” he said.

“Police alone cannot fight crime, they need all community stakeholders to come together.”

Makasi said police officers have many other pressing issues and called for the deployment of law enforcement and traffic officers in the townships.

Makasi described Brown’s Farm as the hot spot. He said he hoped that the opening of a temporal station in Samora Machel next month would boost efforts to tackle crime.

“Even though it’s going to be a temporal police station, we want it to be fully resourced to make it easy to react to crime scenes,” he said. The station is expected to be completed by 2020.

Philippi East station spokesperson Captain Bheki Xulu said taxi violence, vigilante and mob justice contributed immensely.

He added that several informal settlements in the area also contributed.

“Other incidents contributed; when 11 people were killed in Marikana informal settlement at the same time,” he said. He said they intended to engage with the community structures, revive the neighbourhood watch and concentrate on illegal shebeens to curb murder incident in the area.