September 2015 Neighbourhood news, taken seriously Tel: 021 811 7654 info@rondeboschlife.co.za

By Tammy ThompsonThe 6th Rondebosch Scouts have re-cently established its very first girl patrol, with five new local girls join-ing the scout group.

The local scouts have always been open to girls and boys, but

scouts leader John Frasier said it has always been mostly boys.

The scouts’ policy has also long favoured boys, but Mr Frasier said that has changed to incorporate girls some years ago.

After a recent surge of interest

Neighbourhood News, Taken Seriously

Advertise in RondeboschLife

info@rondeboschlife.co.za

Call Barrie On 021 811 7654

THE Rondebosch Community Improve-ment District (RCID) must be one of the most effective crime-fighting initiatives in Cape Town, if not the whole of South Africa, if Police statistics are anything to go by.

At the recent annual general meet-ing of the RCID, acting Rondebosch Po-lice Station Commander Gavin Joseph announced that in the last six months there have been no murders, home in-vasions, hi-jackings or serious assault cases in the RCID area, which runs from Park Road in the north to Avenue De Mist in the south, and between Camp-ground Road in the west and the M5 in the east.

The police recorded only one street mugging in the area over the last six month. Capt Joseph said there has also been a decrease in burglaries (four fewer cases than the same period a year ago) and theft out of vehicles (12 fewer cases). He did not give the total numbers of these crimes at the meet-ing.

He said the only crime that in-

These six local girls make up the 6th Rondebosch Scouts’ first ever all-girl troop. At the back from the left are Jamie Fraser, Robyn Reiner-Pope and Caitlyn Millard. In front from the left are Thandi Mathombela, Dale Reiner-Pope and Vivienne Banks.

Local scouts’ first girl troop

continued on page 5

continued on page 5

RCID’s spectacular anti-crimesuccess

Riverside Mall Rondebosch www.2ndtake.co.za 021 685 3380

THE Second-hand Store

Exciting Spring Fashion Arrivals!

International designer wear from

Armani to Zara

2 www.rondeboschlife.co.za info@rondeboschlife.co.zaSeptember 2015

Street people keep local rent-a-cop busyBy Tamlynne ThompsonWHILE most of Cape Town’s munici-pal law enforcement officers work an-ywhere in the City, depending on where the need is greatest, a small number of them are dedicated to a specific area only.

Ward 58, of which Rondebosch forms part, is one of the areas which has had its own, dedicated law en-forcement officer. Marmaduke Moses has been working in the area for almost

three years. He says anti-social behav-iour of street people and rat-running are the two issues in the area that takes up most of his time. About half of all the complaints that he has to deal with have to do with street people.

He said the most problematic are-as are in Loch, Chichester and Chester Roads, where he constantly has to in-tervene to make sure that street peo-ple do not break any City by-laws. “We can’t arrest vagrants unless they are

breaking the law,” he said.

Mr Moses forms part of the City’s Rent-a-Cop project, which allows Law En-forcement officers to be hired by the private sector, City Improvement Districts or ward councillors, who pay their salary.

In his case, Mr Moses is paid for by ward coun-cillor Matthew Kempthorne.

Law Enforce-ment officers are employed by the City to enforce by-laws, which include those reg-ulating dumping, parking, liquor outlets, animals, graffiti, prob-lem buildings and parks. They differ

from Metro police officers, whose focus is crime prevention, and who can en-force national laws as well as city by-laws.

Mr Moses’s total annual cost of R218 000 is paid for by Mr Kempthorn’s ward allocation, an amount of about R700 000 which each ward councillor gets annually to spend in their ward at their discretion.

Mr Kempthorne said the R218 000 he pays includes Mr Moses’s salary, training and equipment for the job.

Although Mr Moses is dedicated to Ward 58, he works hand-in hand with Ward 62’s Law Enforcement Officer, Alicia Hartman.

Mr Kempthorne said one of the rea-sons why he invested in a Law Enforce-ment officer dedicated to his area is to minimise response time. He explained that when people call the City’s emer-gency hotline, 107, the complaint goes onto a combined list of tasks that the Law Enforcement department has to deal with. But when a Law Enforcement officer is dedicated to an area, he only deals with complaints coming from that specific area, and is therefore able to deal with them sooner.

Mr Moses starts his working day at 7.30am, and responds to Rondebosch complaints filtered through from the 107 emergency control room. Some-times Mr Kempthorne contacts him di-rectly to deal with an issue.

Mr Kempthorne said it would be impractical to allow the community to call Mr Moses directly. “All he would be doing is answering calls (from res-idents) instead of working in the field.” The community can call the emergency 107 number to make use of his services.

From right: Law enforcement of-ficer dedicated to the Rondebosch area Marmaduke Moses, local ward councillor Mat-thew Kempthorne and Law Enforce-ment officer Alicia Hartman.

Free quotes in Southern Suburbs

Contact Dewet: 062 874 9396 info@diyman.co.za

Painting

Picture hanging

Tiling

& other handyman tasks

Handyman services

3www.rondeboschlife.co.za info@rondeboschlife.co.zaSeptember 2015

MORE than 80 trees marked with large yellow crosses along the Liesbeek Riv-er close to the Newlands Stadium will be felled by the City within the next year.

The plan to fell the 88 invasive and exotic trees along the river was initial-ly met with hostility from community members. But Kyran Wright, the river manager for Friend of the Liesbeek, a non-profit organisation, said removing the invasive trees will help the river.

The invasive tree species such as Pine and Black Elder trees out-compete indigenous trees and plants for wa-ter and nutrients. Mr Wright said some invasive species along the river even change the chemistry of the soil so that only that species can grow.

However, there have been con-cerns from the public that removing the trees will impact the urban forest along the river. Environmental conservation group Tree Keepers Cape Town ob-jected to the felling of exotic trees such as palms, which are not invasive.

According to a post on the Tree Keeper Facebook page, the group was concerned that too much of the forest’s canopy would be lost, decreasing the shade in the area. “There must be some method to conserve mature exotic trees in the river corridor ... the trees soften the edges and make a pleasant place to recreate and walk,” they said.

But the City said only exotic trees that pose a threat to the safety of the river users will be felled. “Some of those trees are rotten and may fall on passers-by or damage properties,” the City’s media office said in response to queries.

Because trees between Arbor Road and Sans Souci Road have not been maintained for the past 15 years, many are heavily overgrown and located on

unstable banks, said Mr Wright. He said these unmaintained exotic trees will be a problem in the future.

The City is legally obliged, under the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act, to plan for the erad-ication of invasive species. The trees that pose the greatest safety risk will be felled first, said the City.

Mr Wright said the FoL is actively involved in the process. He said the FoL team will assist the felling contractor and he will be on site often to make sure everything is going according to plan.

He said they were also consulted on which trees should be marked so that trees harbouring nests won’t be affect-ed. “We’re in full support of the tree felling provided that it is done in an en-vironmentally sensitive manner.”

The City plans to plant one indig-enous tree for every three invasives felled along the river. The FoL will procure and source the indigenous re-placement trees and oversee the main-tenance and growth of those trees once they have been planted.

Mr Wright said the only short term drawback of removing the trees is that a bit of the cano-py will be lost.

The 88 trees that are marked to be felled are not all the inva-sives along the river, said Mr Wright, adding that only these few will be felled because the City doesn’t want to make a huge visual impact on the River.

88 invasive trees along the river to be felled

Large yellow crosses mark the 88 invasive trees which will be felled by the City along the Liesbeek River close to the New-lands stadium.

4 www.rondeboschlife.co.za info@rondeboschlife.co.zaSeptember 2015

RCID, GSCID stick with private securityCITY improvement districts (CIDs) across Cape Town have been moving towards hiring Rent-a-Cops for their ability to arrest and issue fines, but it seems that the Rondebosch improve-ment districts are not interested in forming part of this trend.

Both the Rondebosch Community Improvement District (RCID) and the Groote Schuur Community Improve-ment District indicated that they will be sticking to private security guards to implement their public safety tasks, de-spite the fact that these security guards do not have powers of arrest.

The City has recently adopted a policy that allows the private sector and CIDs to “hire” Law Enforcement Officers.

So far, at least 10 Cape Town CIDs, including neighbouring Observatory Im-provement District and Woodstock Im-provement District (WID), have moved to the Rent-a-Cop system.

It seems that a level of disillusion-ment has grown among CIDs about the ability of private security guards to ef-fectively patrol public spaces.

Over the past few years, it has be-come clear that private security guards

are extremely limited in what they can do.

They may not stop and search, fine or apprehend anybody except in extreme situ-ations when they are allowed to carry out a citi-zen’s arrest like any private citi-zen.

CIDs have found that private security guards find it particular-ly difficult to stop antisocial behav-iour from street people, because touching them in any way is con-sidered assault.

Private secu-rity companies, especially the big ones such as ADT and Secu-ritas, tend to be

very cautious when conducting citizen’s arrests and confiscating clearly stolen property such as supermarket trolleys, for fear of law suits against them.

Private security guards’ functions have therefore been reduced to simply calling the police or City Law Enforce-ment Officers to come to the scene. They therefore simply fulfil the ob-serve-and-report functions of a neigh-bourhood watch, albeit as a profession-ally paid one.

A query from RondeboschLife about the trend towards rent-a-cops seemed to have hit a raw nerve at the Groote Schuur Improvement District.

The COO, Anthony Davies, said: “Yes we certainly have considered it but for financial reasons, we cannot af-ford to do that.

“We need our manpower. We’re not excited about it (replacing private se-curity guards with rent-a-cops). I must be very careful what I say to you, and please be careful what you write. I’ve said to you, that for financial reasons, we have decided not to request rent-a-cops. Full stop.”

He did not want to elaborate.The Rondebosch Community Im-

provement District also indicated that they are not considering Rent-a-Cops, because their current deal with ADT is working very well. (see article else-where).

The RCID boasts a sterling record of virtually having eradicated crime from its area through a combination of swamping the area with five ADT pa-trol vehicles, a system of licence-plate recognition cameras and a good work-ing relationship with the police.

RCID manager Shirley Aldum said the residents in the RCID area are “happy with what they’ve got”.

Left: A passer-by walks past the gaping hole in the railway fence in White Road. Following com-plaints from the community about the state of the fence on the Rondebosch rail reserve opposite Harwick Road, the Passenger Railway Association of South Africa (Prasa) said the fixing the fence has been prioritised. Prasa spokesperson, Daphne Keyster, told RondeboschLife that they have forwarded the matter to the Prasa maintenance team, who is in the process of doing some repair work on the Southern Sub-urbs railway line.

Broken fence

Home of the famous Chippies Prego Steak Roll

do portuguese

Silwood Centre, corner of Park and Campground Road. Tel: 021 686 0421

We are open and fully functional during load shedding

5www.rondeboschlife.co.za info@rondeboschlife.co.zaSeptember 2015

from girls, they decided to establish the first girl patrol, called the Sables Patrol.

He said all of the girls, except for his daughter Jamie, 13, who has been part of the group for three years, are new to Scouts, and will soon be earn-ing their first badges for pathfinding and cooking on their first camp at the Ap-pleton camp site on Signal Hill.

The girls, aged 11 to 16, all from the Rosebank and Rondebosch area, said are very excited about their first camp, where they will learn outdoor and sur-vival skills, team work, and do lots of hiking.

Despite being beginners, the girls have already done well in races and games with other scouts, participated in obstacle courses and have already mastered some of the scout knots.

Caitlin Millard, 16, said she doesn’t find it difficult to compete with the boys, but sometimes the girls have to step up their game when the tasks are “strength attributed”.

Jamie said she doesn’t think the boys are stronger than they are. “They’re just older than us.”

Jamie, who is the patrol leader, said she feels quite close to the other girl scouts, as she was the only girl in the Rondebosch scouts for a while.

She said there were other girls when she was a cub, but they soon left when they grew older.

Before the Sables were established, some of the girls competed in the Gor-don Shield camping competition, a lo-cal scout skills-based competition, and placed 8th out of 38 Scout teams.

Contact jfrasier@mweb.co.za.

Rondebosch Scouts’ first girl patrol

RCID’s spectacular successcreased in the area was theft of vehi-cles, which rose by six cases.

The police said the RCID’s crime-fighting initiative was so suc-cessful that it was clearly displacing crime from the RCID area to the Ronde-bosch CBD and to Rosebank and Mow-bray.

But it is not all bad for the adjacent areas. The police said the licence-plate recognition cameras of the RCID regu-larly alerts the police to stolen vehicles passing through the area, thereby help-ing to fight crime in other areas as well.

Capt Joseph ascribed the success to the collaboration between the Police, the RCID and the private security com-pany ADT. Every day, “we sit together, we analyse, we plan and we share in-formation. We are clearly doing some-thing right,” he said.

He praised the manager of the RCID, Shirley Aldum, for keeping the Police on their toes. “If she feels Saps (the South African Police Service) are not doing our work properly she will pick up the phone. I will then call the member in and address the problem,” he said.

What makes the RCID’s success even more astounding is that it is a voluntary initiative, as opposed to the mandatory levy payments by property owners enforced by the other 53 im-provement districts in Cape Town.

The RCID is built around a special deal between most of the home owners in the area and ADT. About 90% of the residences subscribe to ADT’s armed response services.

ADT had agreed to provide five per-manent patrol vehicles to the area, a control hub with camera monitors, and the salaries of a full-time manager and administrative staff.

Over and above this arrangement with ADT, the residents of the RCID

made voluntary contributions to set up a system of 10 licence-plate recognition cameras throughout the area. Each vol-untary member of the RCID also pays a small levy towards the maintenance and expansion of the camera system.

It was announced at the AGM that the RCID was set to install five addi-tional cameras once the best locations have been identified in collaboration with the police.

The RCID chairperson, Bruce Bur-meister, said that membership of the RCID currently stands at between 85 and 90% of the home owners in the area.

He believed that the RCID is very close to the maximum number of mem-bers that it can hope to sign up. The re-maining 10% or so are made up of ten-ants who are not as invested in the area as home owners, “one or two people who subscribe to other security com-panies (not ADT) and one or two who do not believe in having an alarm.

continued from page 1

continued from page 1

Bruce Burmeister, the chairperson of the RCID, addressing the organisation’s recent AGM at Micklefield Primary School in Wood Road.

6 www.rondeboschlife.co.za info@rondeboschlife.co.zaSeptember 2015

Resident takes action, addict removedRONDEBOSCH resident Chris Magob-otiti first noticed the plastic shack on the stairs of the Belmont Road railway bridge when commuters and visitors to the library started avoiding the stairs.

The fact that a drug addict was liv-ing in the structure that was steadi-ly growing in size was not surprising, given the depth of Cape Town’s drug epidemic.

But what did surprise Mr Magoboti-ti was that no-one did anything about it, and that when he decided at last to take action himself, it took only one call to have the structure removed and the addict supported by the City’s Dis-placed People’s Unit.

Mr Magobotiti said the shack had obstructed the stairway for weeks. De-spite the presence of security guards in the vicinity, “no-one was doing any-thing” about it.

Drug paraphernalia on the scene showed that the occupant was addicted to unga, a heroin derivative.

The mostly plastic shack grew as the occupant added more and more cardboard to it and it became increas-ingly difficult for pedestrians to use the bridge.

Mr Magobotiti approached the man-ager of the Rondebosch train station to address the issue but was told that the bridge was not Metrorail’s area.

In the end it took him less than five minutes, by calling the municipal call centre, to log a complaint on the City’s C3 system. Within a week, the stairway had been cleared.

Complaints can be logged by phon-ing 0860 103 089, or online at www.capetown.gov.za/en/ServiceRequests

For weeks, a shack blocked the pedestrian

stairway at the Belmont Road railway bridge.