THE CRIME SWEEPERS
Women of Ocean View try psychological warfare to repel and unsettle gangsters
BRISTLING: The women of Ocean View in Cape Town’s southern peninsula stand with brooms at the ready, prepared to fight crime in their area in a novel way THEY are the Home Executive Watch Group: 13 housewives hoping to rid their streets of scum with just a broom, a cup of tea and nerves of steel.
The women are from Ocean View which, despite its picturesque location overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Town, is filthy with crime.
There were at least two triple murders in the area at the end of last year, and one this year. Now DA councillor Patricia Francke is ready for a cleansing. This week she started training unemployed single mothers, widows and oumas to fight back in Aries Avenue.
The plan is unusual but simple. First, the women started a WhatsApp group. If someone sees a known troublemaker or a suspicious person, an alert goes out.
Then they switch on their kettles, make a cup of tea and grab their brooms. They step outside, keeping the hot tea nearby, and start sweeping at the person in unison and in silence.
“You are sweeping the person out of your environment. This is your street, this is where you belong,” Francke told the women at a training session on Friday.
As for the tea, she said, it was not a weapon and should be used only if they were threatened. “[The tea] is a support when you need to run. You throw the tea at the person.”
She hopes the women will scare the crooks away, or at least unsettle them.
Aries Avenue is a battleground for gangsters who open fire throughout the day.
Resident Desiree Cloete said it was time for children to have the freedom to play outside.
“We are like prisoners in our own homes. We can’t even keep our doors open when we watch TV. We are doing this to help fix our community,” said Cloete.
“I am ready for action. I don’t have children of my own, but I care about the little ones here,” said her neighbour, Vanessa Francke.
Not far from them, a 58-yearold woman is mourning the loss CLEANING UP: A ’skollie’ gets a cold reception from the women of Aries Avenue, Ocean View, in this posed picture. The women alert one another to the approach of a known drug dealer or gangster and take to the street to ’sweep’ him away of her daughter and son-in-law who were murdered in December, shortly after they got married. One of their friends was also shot and killed. She asked not to be named for the sake of their two children.
“Their three-year-old asked me again the other day: ‘Grandma, tell me, who shot Mommy and Daddy?’ It hurt me but I had to answer.
“I have been waiting for the social worker to help these children since their parents’ murder. I went to see one in December. She told me she was going on holiday. The children are very traumatised.”
The woman said her daughter had been a wonderful person who had lived for her children and her family.
Kathy Cronje, chairman of the Ocean View Community Policing Forum, said it felt like someone was shot every week in the suburb of between 20 000 and 25 000 people.
There had been serious problems with the management of the local police station, but new leadership had taken over and resources had been beefed up.
This had helped to increase the number of arrests and the amount of drugs seized. But it was not enough.
“Literally all the kids are traumatised,” said Cronje.
“There was a man with an axe in his head sitting on the pavement the other day. The kids — some as young as five — were running around him asking ‘Are you OK, uncle?’ and carried on playing . . . We need more social workers.
“This is a community who feels as if they have been deserted by everyone.”
She commended the women who had joined Francke’s programme.
Despite only starting this week, Francke said, she had already been inundated with requests to train other women. In addition to this project she hopes to start initiatives to keep children away from the gangs that recruit them from an early age. This would include homework and reading groups run by the women of the community.
“It will bring back unity in the streets. I will roll this out everywhere, even take this programme to areas outside Ocean View,” she said. “I will do anything for the community — I will die for any woman, any child.”
[The tea] is for when you need to run. You throw the tea at the person