Although no one can identify the roots of this gangsterism issue and tell when it will end, Monyakeng community is doing whatever is within its powers to help fight against it. Most people grouped themselves together and put their energy as well as dedicating their time to work under structures that combine both community and police with regard to this issue. Structures such as CPF are on the lookout to ensure that this barbaric acts ends.
Fortunately enough I had a talk with Mrs. Makgaula who is a Secretary for the CPF. She poured her heart out about this matter and said “We doing whatever we can to help fight this,” they even went to an extent of meeting the leaders of those groups trying to get their side of the story about the fights and killings, thinking that maybe they can help restore peace between them as they also do not know what they are fighting for. In most cases they fight about material things and revenge, she stated that there are 9 groups of gangsters in Monyakeng who fight each other that they know of so far, but she believes that they will break through only with full corporation from parents especially those of a culprits to stop hiding their kids and let justice be done.
It has been realized that these issues place the safety of those who are not directly involved in this brutal acts at risk, most especially Learners and Educators. Schools are now turned into their battle grounds. One of the Educators at a school that is highly affected by this issue, ITHABELENG SECONDARY SCHOOL, Mr. Ditabe made it his responsibility to help fight the rate of gangsterism inside the school premises. Since there is a problem, he and his staff members are well aware of it. They are doing everything in their powers to fight it. There are precautions that they take as management, such as searching learners just once in a while for drugs or weapons. He asked the station commander to provide them with a warrant of search and again they have informants, those who alert them if there is going to be a fight after school and they immediately alert the police. In a case where one get stabbed inside the school premises he said they only deal with that like any normal emergency situation since they don’t have a teacher that is specifically trained for First Aid, and they are bound by the law not to do anything as they are not trained for such. He said they only call an ambulance, alert the police and inform the parents. Because all of this happens inside the school premises it creates a negative image for the school. Mr. Ditabe stated that because of this parents are taking their kids out of school especially those who are doing grade8 and they don’t seem to be getting high numbers of grade8 learners during registrations either and their achievements are no longer taken into consideration.
As much as we as the community want to fight this matter we also want the police to intervene and assure us that they doing everything for our safety since they realize that the above mentioned School is facing a high rate of crime inside school premises. The police are well informed of the rate of this issue which doesn’t seem to decline. The station commander speaks about their intervention. He said they have the Education Based Crime Prevention Project and there are School Acts which allow different levels intervention from police. Unfortunately the police only get involved from level 4 to 5, but then it’s a crisis already and they are just reacting to it in a sense that if there is a fight they investigate the case. He said they sometimes go to schools and search for dangerous weapons and drugs, but for that to happen they have to get a request from the Department of Education first then apply for a warrant of search; unfortunately they do not just decide that this morning we want to go to the schools. He said what they also need from schools is for them to appeal to the Department of Education and say “This is what we need from you”.
In most cases, especially murder cases, culprits goes free after few days and we all wonder why is that happening, and where does that say to the victim’s family. Mr. Engelbrecht said that it is unfortunate that they can’t intervene on that, their role as the police whenever there is a crime is to collect evidence, collect statements from the witnesses, and then take the case documents with all the evidence and give it to the state prosecutor, from there the suspect apply for bail of which they oppose at first and then they serve 7 days while awaiting for their bail application since they now have lawyers. Meanwhile they are given a chance to gather information and evidence of which why they want the suspect not to be granted bail, and from there the case is taken before court and that’s where the decision is made. He said” we wish to provide some counseling to the victim’s family but unfortunately the service is not available to us like in a bigger places”.
Since we want this to end, there are roles that should be played by the community, police and the prosecutor, of which we regard them as the responsibilities. Since a crime starts in a community, members of the community see what is happening so their role is to give information to the police. They are the source of information; from there the police gather the information given to them by the members of the community, make investigations and take the evidence. They also need the support from the community to be the witnesses in the court of law and it then goes to the prosecutor and their role is to make sure that the case is solid; and it has all the information from the victim. The evidence and the witnesses can then be presented to the magistrate. At this stage they have all the necessary and relevant information gathered to influence the court’s decision for the culprit to be convicted.
