Bopha Foundation tells Gauteng to show Kempton Park how the panic button works

Women in Kempton Park are not going shopping and are not leaving their homes, the Bopha Foundation said this week, after a run of murders in Ekurhuleni that has left women in the area afraid to walk out of their own front doors.

The foundation’s Andrew Baloyi said the organisation wants accountability from the Gauteng government, and is prepared to go to court to get it. As eNCA reported on 20 September, the foundation has called on the province to step up its response.

Baloyi described the position women in the area now find themselves in. “They don’t go shopping. They don’t go anywhere now. They are sitting at home,” he said. “We will fight, we want accountability and we want these programmes to be implemented in such areas. We will go to court.”

What was promised

Gauteng has undertaken to roll out a package of crime-fighting tools across the province, including panic buttons, cameras, helicopters, drones and patrols. The foundation’s complaint is not that the promises were made. It is that the people who are supposed to press the button have never been shown how it works.

Baloyi put the question directly. “When you have an initiative like panic button, you need to show it to people how this thing works. I mean, it’s a funded project, I believe so. So if it’s a funded project, why is it not demonstrated to people how to utilise it?”

That is a specific, checkable demand. A panic button that a resident does not know how to trigger, or does not know is installed in her street, is not a safety measure. It is a line item.

What the foundation is asking for

The Bopha Foundation wants the province to demonstrate the system to residents, and to extend the programmes into areas like Kempton Park where the need is acute. Baloyi said most residents are unaware of the interventions or how to use them when they need help.

He also warned about what happens when a community concludes that the state is not answering. “If the government does not step in, there will be problems, because communities will start organising themselves,” he said.

He was careful to credit the police for the work already under way. “We know the police are working on it and we appreciate that, and we want them to continue implementing it,” he said. That acknowledgement matters. The South African Police Service carries these cases, and the foundation is asking for the response to be strengthened and explained, not abandoned.

What women in Kempton Park are living with

Kempton Park sits inside Ekurhuleni, one of the country’s busiest metropolitan areas, built around OR Tambo International Airport and the freight and manufacturing belt that runs alongside it. It is a place where people work shifts, where women travel early and come home late, and where the ordinary business of getting to a shop or a taxi rank should not require a calculation about safety.

The foundation’s account is that this calculation is now being made every day. Women are staying in. The effect is not only fear. It is lost income for people who cannot get to work, children who cannot be walked to school, and households that stop moving.

Baloyi said the murders are continuing. “Our sisters are living in fear in Kempton Park,” he said.

The question that remains

The Gauteng government has not yet responded publicly to the foundation’s specific request, which is that the panic button system be demonstrated to the communities it was designed for. That is the next thing to watch. A funded programme that residents cannot use is a programme that has not arrived, whatever the launch photographs showed.

The foundation has said it will take the matter to court if the accountability does not come. Until the province answers the question about how the system is explained and rolled out on the ground, women in Kempton Park will keep making the same decision they are making now, which is to stay inside.

Source: eNCA, Women in Ekurhuleni living in fear - Bopha Foundation