Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in South Africa Han Peters and his wife Alessandra Peters visit Sophiatown
Dutch envoy visits the Sophiatown precinct.
The management of the Sophiatown Police Station with the Sophiatown Community Police Forum (SCPF) hosted the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in South Africa Han Peters and his wife Alessandra Peters on June 5.
According to the ambassador, the aim of the visit is to learn more about South Africa and see where they can help out.
A meeting was held to address the issues in our community and then the group drove through the community and stopped at places to such as the Newclare flats, Claremont, and Westbury High School as well as Kofifi FM.
In the meeting was station commander Brigadier Susan Crafford, Captain Jerbes de Bruyn, Lieutenant Colonel Mathebula, PR Cllr Cathy Seefort, Chairperson of SCPF Tilly Michaels along with some residents.
“For us, our biggest challenge is the war over drugs, the shootings, poverty also plays a big part of this.
We also have many foreign shops which are servicing and the small local shops – so they often are targets to robberies too.
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There are also a lot of domestic violence cases, liquor and drugs are a big cause of domestic violence and it is very difficult to police these crimes.
“Then we have sexual assault, we serve Rahima Moosa Mother & Child Hospital and have found that there are a lot of babies that get raped.
“We also get abandoned kids and lately what has been happening at the hospital is that mothers will give birth and then disappear, so we have to investigate these cases because the mothers have a responsibility, this is child neglect and so on,” explained Crafford.
Michaels added: “Unemployment is high and this is why there is so much drug trafficking in the community because it creates an avenue for an income for them.” Crafford also spoke of the bad infrastructure (flats), housing issue, many illegal foreigners moving into the area and illegal shebeens.
“We have a problem with resources, we are short on them, so if we could get more then it would really assist us in helping the community,” said Crafford.
At the visit to Westbury High, principal Dr Been Robinson and deputy principal Corinne Jacobs spoke to the ambassador and shared some issues they are facing at the school.
“Almost every second learner has tried drugs or alcohol before they start here, so we’re speaking between the ages of 13 and 14-years-old.
“We have parents who are children who have to raise a child, we have absent fathers but also have present absent mothers because they go early to work and come back home late so the learner is always on their own,” said Dr Robinson.
Jacobs added: “We have partnered with the University of Johannesburg and we see that we only have about nine of our matric learners who have applied to university and this is out of 206 learners.
“The learners who don’t make it usually sit at home for five to 10 years before finding a job.”
According to Dr Robinson, last week there was a mini gang fight in the school between learners. Jacobs shared that there’s 18 girls who are pregnant at the school and they spoke about the feeding scheme that the children are heavily dependent on and it all comes down to the social ills in our community.
Plans and solutions to all these problems were also discussed.
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