Shooting from the lip

Plan”.

There are other planning forums, too – like Ward Committees, in the 387 municipal wards across the province. Or our Community Police Forums. Or our schools’ School Safety Committees, guided by our School Governing Bodies and School Management Teams. And our SAPS Sector Forums – under each of the province’s 150 police stations.

These feed into multiyear planning processes, like Integrated Development Planning (IDP).

Once our safety plans have been drawn up, a multitude of safety partners need to sing from the same hymn sheets. A school, for example, has about 30 safety partners – from police, to school counsellors to the handymen who fix the holes in the school fence.

Looking at the big picture, it’s easy to drown in an alphabet soup of agencies and acronyms. And we wonder why the “whole of society” ends up wholly, hopelessly confused…

Could it be there’s a missing ingredient? Something to “hold it all together”, for our improved safety?

Researching the Community Works Programmes, Kate Philip identified “community management skills” as a missing ingredient, necessary to sustain mobilisation, organisation and communication.

Ah. A system which multiple safety partners populate with their individual and collective purpose, energy and passion? A “precinct management model”? Precisely.

There’s a model staring us in the face: the City Improvement District (CID). CIDs comprise a funding model – usually a rates top-up, but alternatives could be applied. But their real potential lies with the management systems that that make them tick.

In the past 17 years, 35 CIDs have blossomed across Cape Town, with crucial lessons learned along the way, for improved safety, and laying fertile ground for life-changing economic growth.

As we mobilise the “whole of society” for safety, could CIDs offer the “non-human systems” which co-ordinate every human effort? Which distil our combined contributions into safer communities?

(With a nod to five very wise people.)