Our local Community Police Forum asked me to speak at their AGM, and wanted me to propose a topic. I said I’d like to address why, in this crime-obsessed society, the annual meeting of a police precinct containing some 50 000 adult people would not have more than 0.03% attendance. I got keen on that question, as I thought round it, and I’d like to submit to Moneywebbers a condensed version of the speech:

Riparile, goeie naand, molweni, shalom, namaste, sanibonani, goeie naand, dumelang, salaam aleikom and good evening. When CPFs came in 15 years ago, this was wonderful exciting new-age new-world empowering news. Imagine, we the mere people could actually meet the police, be involved, influence them.

At an early CPF function I shared a platform with Mary Metcalf. Mary – herself a wondrous phenomenon, ordinary person become high-ranking policy-maker – had a firm message: Carpe Diem, seize the day. The time had come, she said. This was the Carpe Diem era.

I was on a CPF for a while. I didn’t see a lot of Diems getting Carpéd. I heard a term called “Area”, being in-group shorthand for “Area Commissioner”. Whenever we raised a suggestion for the police to do (as opposed to suggestions for us to do, such as repaint the station, again) the answer was “no, Area’s orders are...” We could talk to the police, but it was Area that got heard.  

We the people mainly got our knuckles rapped, every meeting. We were still forgetting to lock our car doors. We were still leaving our gates unlocked. We were still leaving our alarms switched off. We were a delinquent public; tsk!

This switched me off. I don’t want a society where I’m okay if I have great security. I want a society where I’m so okay that I need no security. When I was a child, gates and fences were waist high. You could sit on your stoep and greet people walking by. I want that again. I want to see razor wire become a museum exhibit.

I know I am not acquiring that tomorrow. I know it’s not top of the police agenda today. But it must be part of what the CPF and the police are about.  If your vision is to mitigate extremes of badness while taking basic badness as for granted forever, you lose me.

But that is not what keeps 49 850 people away from this hall tonight. What is it that does keep them away? I offer one big unhesitant enormous bald-statement categorical answer, and then I tentatively, deferentially ask some polite questions.

The big answer is this: that all or nearly all local community endeavours are eternally under-supported is because they don’t have power.

Some of you know that I have, since Noah was a baby, been punting a notion of an upgraded democracy where the people actually “rule”, as the branding claims. I am not going to fling that at you now – be relieved – but I am firmly say that to the next generation, or the one after, the notion of local communities sharing power with national parliament will be as self-evident as shrink-wrapped cheese or twist-off beers are to us, causing (i) a more contented nation and (ii) CPF-type activities never again wringing hands and wishing the hall was fuller.

I bring this up because when a high target is in mind it stimulates ambitious aims, which are worthwhile things to have. Having brought it up, I ask: for now purposes, what might make us a participative crime-free community? I am aware that no-one is more loathsome than he who, while not doing a job, tells those who are doing the job how to do the job better. But you asked me, you force me to sing my song and I don’t think you seek hero-worship. So I ask questions, for you who are doing the job to pick up if they chime, and discard freely if not.

Could it be that we get a bit local-politicked-out? We have now community policing forum and community safety forum and residents association and a local-initiative armed guard. We get a tad bewildered. We get a sense of duplication. Could it be that we detect a whiff of disharmony? For our relatively low level of local crime, two bodies seem willing to receive thanks. Do we owe that thanks to the force that we all pay, via our taxes, or the force that half the people pay privately while the other half ride on their coat-tails? Do these two forces support each other? Do they share information? May the CPF take a lead here?

Could it be that in a way there is too much harmony? I don’t think a public oversight body should be best friends with its officials. Parliament should be a thing that Ministers are scared of. The Board should be a thing that management is scared of. The CPF should be a thing that Sup Moodley is scared of. That is three “shoulds”. I invite you to contemplate whether you see yourselves making one of them true.

An element of constructive tension may not be what who “do the job” want. I’m not saying you should. I’m saying it would prick up ears among the rest of us. Look at figures that the police give you, such as bald percentage changes. To know that house robbery is down by 3.8% is ho-hum. Is that from 1000 to 962 or from 500 to 481? Could challenge on these issues be in order?

Possibly other issues too? A few months ago the Gauteng Department of Community Safety widely advertised an Imbizo, at Wembley, at 1500 hours. I got there at 4, calculating that an hour later was a reasonable guess. People were milling around aimlessly. I asked an official when things would actually start. He shrugged his shoulders. “When the MEC comes”, he said, “can be 5. Or 6.”

Why doesn’t a CPF, like you, shout about things like that? We all know why. We don’t want to be called “racist”. We’ve got to get over that, and our terror of this big word “demographics” the 21st century term for “racism”. Wrong racism is not in a numbers game, it’s in attitudes. That attitude that tolerates your compatriots behaving in destructive ways, ways you’d rebel at if was your own gang, is as racist as you can get. I was being racist myself by assuming I should be an hour late. I’d be more patriotic to shout “you say you’re starting at 3, so start at 3.” That’s real patriotism, each of us doing what we believe stops our country following the crumbly trail of Africa.   

Then, a small symbolic question. This precinct serves some 18 suburbs. Could it be that when we apply real democracy we will nag for a precinct name that does not leave the people of Greenside, Emmarentia, Hurlingham, Craighall et al feel like bywoners on Parkview’s patch? Could such a thing be good to start now; getting in practice?
I will go back to my box now, and shut up, but first I want you to know that you, the CPF members, the reservists, the residents association, the Safe Parkview project, the police themselves, are true, real, genuine, inspirations. While most of we the 99.7% drink beer or earn loot or watch Desperate Housewives, you put time and energy into our community’s shared health. You think we don’t notice, and sad to say there’s a major way that you’re right. But we have moments, usually when we are uttering the well-worn imprecations “God give us better”, “Zuma give us better” or “Zille give us better”, of humbled recognition that people among us put unrequited effort into making things better. We are grateful. We tend to forget to say so. Forgive us, and keep on doing what you who do it wish to do, in your way, by your criteria, hearing perspectives from we on the outside but never having to pay attention, not until we roll up our sleeves and join you the doers.