Download PDFOrlando is a township in the area of Soweto. The township was founded in 1931. Over the years community challenges in this township grew, social issues such as crime, substance abuse, GBV, poverty and overcrowding in the area became a norm.
Crime has increased dramatically in Orlando East; people are getting robbed and killed every week and some during the day. The community is living in fear, as young boys resort to crime. In an overcrowded community, people often don’t know who is doing all these crimes. It could be the unemployed youth in the area or people from outside the community. To combat the crime issue in Orlando, the community started programs like community safety patrols to protect people who are going to work in the early hours of the morning and kids who are using public transport to travel to school.
The other thing that the community has done is to make sure all the places that sells alcohol closes at 10:00 PM so that people don’t walk around drunk and find themselves on danger. This community has lost faith in the Police department.
“We don’t see any arrests and we haven’t received any feedback from the station commander and the police regarding crimes committed in the community,” said a community member. The relationship with the police and the community needs to be rebuild maybe that could help to decrease the crime.
We need more police and active citizens that will be able to keep the community safe. In that way we will see crime going down and less killings of young people in the streets.
This article is an opinion piece submitted on 06 August 2024. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of Karibu! Online or Khanya College. You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Karibu! Online (www.Karibu.org.za), and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
