Cosmo City patrollers suspend their activities

Letter from the patrollers that was shared with the community

COSMO CITY – Cosmo City community leader Thulani Magagula writes:
The past week we saw acts of violence throughout the country which were characterised by looting of businesses, burning of property and destruction of infrastructure.
As we were following the developments through various media platforms, it dawned on us that the violence was now knocking at our doorstep. The community of Ward 100 together with wards 96 and 114, took a proactive approach. Firstly, to act against looting of businesses and destruction of infrastructure, and secondly, to organise themselves, working with structures such as local community policing forums (CPF), private security companies and police to protect and defend their economic centres. This included deploying in all shopping centres with patrolling teams comprised of members of the community, CPF marshals/patrollers as well as a high visibility of police.

The plan and all the efforts seems to have yielded positive results which saw all business centres in the three wards not effected by the violence of the past week. Thus, we wish to express our big thanks to all members of the community, men and women, who were on the streets during cold nights, safeguarding the business centres and other strategic infrastructure in the community.
The teams met on July 19 to conduct an assessment of the operations. After all information had been gathered from security agencies and business centre managers, a decision was made that all community patrolling teams would be pulled out of the operation.
The operation would be handed over to the centre’s private security and allow the normal security systems and protocols to continue, including handing over all patrolling functions to the local CPF and police.

We wish to thank each and every one who contributed to the initiative. The patrollers, the community who provided food and hot beverages, businesses for their donations, and the support of the CPF and police. We hope and believe that once the business centres have done their own internal security assessments, businesses can fully open and all access points/gates opened for easy access to the centres, so we can quickly move on and rebuild our economy.
In the process, we might have made some mistakes and overstepped certain boundaries for which we apologise, and we hope we will continue working together united in other development initiatives.