SATURDAY INTERVIEW

ing in the CPF, they were just not co-operative with outside people.

“So we had the Mitchells Plain Crisis Forum come in and there were members of our CPF who rubbed them up (the wrong way) and we were in conflict all the time.

“It’s not just the Courtney Pieters case that got me fed up with local police. There’s been a low-intensity civil war in Leonsdale for the past five months between the Terribles and The Bad Boys.

“And we’ve been at every CPF meeting highlighting the need for more visibility for a crackdown to stop the guns from coming into our communities. There were almost daily shootings. We buried so many children in the past five months in Leonsdale. And it culminated in a mass shooting of 13 people.

“And that really got me to the point where... if only more was done earlier, then we could have prevented that.”

Mukaddam says he has received “a lot of support from the community” following his resignation.

“There’s a lot of people saying please don’t resign. And the chairperson, Gerald Johannes, says he is not accepting my resignation.”

But on the question of whether he will reconsider his decision, he is tight-lipped.

Mukaddam, who has called Elsies River home for the past 22 years, has always been an activist at heart, a champion for his community.

In 2006, he blew the whis- tle on collusion between South Africa’s bread manufacturers to fix the price of the daily staple. In 2007, Tiger Brands, which runs Albany bakeries, was slapped with a R99 million fine for price-fixing.

Now, his big focus is on restoring the credibility of the Elsies River CPF. He wants the forum to be disbanded and an annual general meeting called to elect new members.

And his vision on the way forward is simple.

“We need to have a lot more holistic approach to crime on the Cape Flats.

“We don’t need more police, we need more social workers. Because our communities are falling apart.

“Our social fabric is breaking down. And this needs to be addressed as well.

“The CPFs have this dual role of being partners with police, but also building other partnerships with other stakeholders and ensuring those stakeholders deliver on the services that communities demand of them.”

Cosatu provincial secretary general Tony Ehrenreich, Imraahn Mukaddam and Courtney Pieters’s mother, Juanita, with Courtney’s brother, Adrian, during the memorial service for the 3-year-old.