Background of Area | Project Overview | Community Meeting | The Way Forward | ALL MULTIMEDIA

A number of issues were raised in our community meeting and there were many solutions which flowed from the discussion.  Firstly the people from our documentaries (Given and ‘Robocop) were in attendance. After watching the documentaries, many people from the community were moved by it but they said as much as they would like to help they do not know which people were genuine car washers and which people just wanted to rob them. 

Given and ‘Robocop’s’ main concern was that they were trying to make an honest living by washing cars but they were no longer allowed to do that, nor do they have access to taps and water in the CBD. Nick from Kodak suggested that the businesses would be happy to start a find for the car washers and give them name tags and uniforms and recommend their car washing services to their customers in return for helping to protect the shops in the CBD as well as warn shop owners about the people who were trying to rob them. 

The police said that the way forward would entail more public meetings like the one we held as well as higher attendance rates at the sector meetings which were currently severely under-attended. Furthermore, the biggest problem faced by the police was low-crime reporting rate, so they encouraged people to report all crimes even minor crimes so that police would be able to plot them in hot spot areas and help police to patrol effectively. Another idea was to combat the problem of an apathetic community by taking advantage of the fact that it is a small community, thus people should be encouraged to speak out more, to take part in public debate and to try and reinvigorate the life on High Street and in the CBD. 

Moreover, businesses, the community the police and the municipality should work together towards positive solutions, for example legalising car washers and regulating it so as to create employment and entrepreneurship. Thus the way forward is to ensure the municipality attends sector meetings and is willing to work towards meeting the needs of the community. 

Inspector Coetzee also spoke about starting a “Restoring justice campaign”, in which small claims like reporting for insurance etc would be dealt with separately so this would open up the criminal justice system in Grahamstown in dealing with larger crimes to make the system more effective and moving towards delivering justice.