In 2018, national crime statistics revealed that Alexandra was among areas with the highest rate of contact crimes and gender-based violence in the country.
In pursuit of a free of gender-based violence community, Agisanang Domestic Abuse Prevention and Training (Adapt), community-based organisations, law enforcement agencies and concerned members of the community converged in Masakhane Community Health Centre auditorium to seek new ways to fight the scourge of gender-based violence and crime in the area.
Nomalanga Ngwenya said the meeting was aimed at bringing together local organisations to discuss the state of safety in the area and introduce a new safety app that will be piloted in Alexandra to identify crime hotspots.
“Today’s Masiphephe network meeting was aimed at discussing ways to fight gender-based violence with different formations of Alexandra and to introduce an app called Safetipin. Alexandra is one of the areas in which the application will be piloted by our partner in a fight against the scourge of GBV, Centre for Communication Impact (CCI) and USAID,” Ngwenya said.
Zanele Zwane of CCI said Safetipin is a map-based online and mobile phone application that works to make communities and cities safer by collecting and disseminating safety-related information on a large scale through crowdsourcing and other methods.
She said the application has been used successfully in countries like India and Kenya to help law enforcement agencies deal with different kinds of crime.
“It is a free app available anywhere in the world. It is available in English, Spanish, Hindi, Khmer and Vietnamese. and we are currently piloting it in Durban and we will soon come to Alexandra. It is used in countries like India and Kenya to curb gender-based violence and other petty crimes in different cities,” Zwane said.
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