Private resources could be mobilised to create effective crime prevention strategies to curb the spate of muggings in Table Mountain National Park.
That’s the view of Andre van Schalkwyk of Table Mountain Watch, an organisation concerned with safety in the park where three athletes were mugged on Saturday during the RMB Ultra-trail race.
A day later cyclists were robbed in the park.
Government lacks the necessary resources to tackle crime on their own, argue civil society stakeholders and private-public partnerships are urgently needed, just like Transnet is beginning to partner with private entities to resolve South Africa’s logistics crisis.
But the Table Mountain situation is complicated by revenue issues — the majority of revenue generated by the lucrative park is redirected towards funding other national parks. Table Mountain National Parks, as a result, lacks the necessary manpower to monitor known crime hotspots, notably Lion’s Head and Signal Hill.
Van Schalkwyk said legislation governing the park was outdated and an obstacle to potential public-private strategies. Private resources could be mobilised to create effective crime prevention strategies that were suited to a public access park — which required a unique approach to cope with the multiple access points.
SANParks’ recent public-private collaborative efforts were encouraging, proving it was possible to combat crime.
“It’s not like we are having to patrol 200km of trail. At the moment there are two hotspots,” he said.
Crisis24 Watch operations manager Andre Colling started mapping crime-related incidents within the park in 2018.
“I am an avid hiker and I was concerned by the number of incidents on the mountain. I had some free time, so I scoured open source and started the map,” he said.
He compiles the map based on data gathered from various social media hiking groups, WhatsApp security groups (neighbourhood watches near the mountain and TMNP security groups) and media outlets.
Of the incidents he has mapped this year, many have been around Signal Hill, Lion’s Head, Kloof Nek and Newlands parking area.
Most incidents happen close to the park edge where criminals can enter and exit easily.
“Lion’s Head and Signal Hill have become particular hotspots. They are target-rich areas (lots of tourists with valuables), and most of these areas are a short walk away from the city or informal settlements that have popped up near this area,” said Colling.
There has to be a different kind of approach, but improving the resources in the park has to be a starting point. We can’t just have one team of rangers, we have to have multiple teams of rangers.
— Parkscape chairperson, Nicky Schmidt
Among the latest victims was financial adviser Leon Roode from Tzaneen, Limpopo, who was robbed of his personal belongings worth R45,000 during the trail race at the weekend.
An elite runner from the UK, Tom Evans, 31, was also robbed of his wedding ring while training for the race but decided to drop out and returned home after his mugging ordeal.
UTCT race director Stuart McConnachie told TimesLIVE Premium he cannot speak on behalf of the runners who were robbed, but they all completed the race.
“Overall, the feedback we received from participants was that it was the best trail run in South Africa, if not the world.”
“Running on a mountain during the evening should not be scary, it’s actually a beautiful experience for runners,” said McConnachie.
Cape Town safety and security MMC JP Smith last week cited a recent response to a parliamentary question answered by forestry, fisheries and environmental affairs minister Barbara Creecy confirming TMNP generated an annual income of almost R300m but only spent about R97m of that.
The reply revealed TMNP employed 70 rangers who worked 45 hours over five or six days in a week.
“If some of this budget funded additional technology, including cameras, drones and aerial support and deployed according to a GPS-enabled, evidence-led dispatching system, we could achieve so much more and ensure that local, domestic and international visitor safety brought more tourists and more jobs to our city,” said Smith.
“We are also using our metro police equestrian unit on some of the trails, as well as plain-clothes officers, in a co-ordinated operational environment with all the relevant agencies,” said Smith.
Nicky Schmidt, chairperson of environmental group Parkscape, said efforts to achieve a sustainable solution were hampered by a lack of co-operation between various mountain stakeholders. Multiple initiatives had failed over the years, usually because they were reactive to crime upsurges but quickly lost momentum when crime levels dropped off.
She said the state’s fiscal crisis and other systemic challenges were aggravating an already serious crime situation. “There has to be a different kind of approach, but improving the resources in the park has to be a starting point,” Schmidt said. “We can’t just have one team of rangers, we have to have multiple teams of rangers,” she said, adding that rather than increasing resources, TMNP was losing staff.
Crime prevention strategies also needed to be inclusive of all communities bordering the park to address the deeper socioeconomic issues, Schmidt said. “We fail because we are standing divided instead of standing united. Solutions need to be sustainable. We have to learn to work together.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.