No signs of police station for Makhaza

THE office of national police commissioner Fannie Masemola is mum on its failure to start construction of a temporary police station in Makhaza as previously promised.

Masemola committed to the erection of a temporary Park Homes building to replace the mobile trailer in Makhaza while speaking at an imbizo in Desmond Tutu Hall at Khayelitsha in July.

Police Minister Bheki Cele was also in attendance.

Masemola said the construction of the police station was expected to start on November 1. It has been 10 days since the expected start of the construction and there is no sign of work seen by the residents.

The land remains vacant with a makeshift “short wall of hope” erected by the Social Justice Coalition as a sign of the expected police station.

The establishment of the Makhaza police station dates back to 2014 when a recommendation was made in the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry that the Provincial Police Commissioner ensure that a new police station is built in Makhaza. This was to ensure that there was an increase in policing capacity in Khayelitsha.

Khayelitsha Development Forum chairperson Ndithini Thyido, who expressed disappointment at yet another broken promise by the police, said there has been no decency by the police management to communicate the reasons behind the delay in the construction. Thyido said this was a damper on the community’s relationship with the police.

Thyido said the matter of a police station in Makhaza remained as urgent as it was 10 years ago. He said this was especially because the area had seen an increase in informal settlements.

“As soon as Makhaza gets its police station, this will immediately shift the crime statistics. The rise in the number of contact crimes that are reported in the crime statistics in Harare and Lingelethu police stations are mostly cases reported by people from Makhaza. We saw such a shift when the Browns Farm satellite police station was erected, as well as the Nyanga police station, which was for years a murder capital. Its statistics immediately changed,” he said.

Police Oversight and Community Safety MEC Reagen Allen said he would write to Masemola and Cele to obtain information about the status of the station.

Police spokesperson André Traut said the permanent Makhaza police station was on the priority list for a new building with the planning and design phase scheduled for the 2022/2023 financial year and the construction phase scheduled for the 2025/2026 financial year.