Western Cape Police Commissioner Patekile responds to growing calls for action amid Cape Flats bloodshed. As the Western Cape continues to stare down the barrel of non-stop bloodshed, with trigger-happy gangsters taking each other out every single day — and innocent bystanders, including children, all too often ending up dead because of it — calls for the province’s police boss to step down seem to be falling on deaf ears. Lieutenant General Thembisile Patekile is not about to up and leave his job anytime soon, as he said on Wednesday that he now wants to work very hard to make the province safer.
And he has a “comprehensive policing strategy” up his sleeve to do just that, he told IOL. “As the provincial commissioner of the Western Cape, I undertake to work with all other legitimate stakeholders within the province whose objective is to create safety in communities.” But experts and community leaders are not convinced, saying it was far too little, too late. Patekile’s remarks come hot on the heels of a scathing report, recently forced to be released by Premier Alan Winde, which said the province’s men and women in blue have been in bed with the maniacal hoodlums of the notorious 28s gang.
It also comes less than 24 hours after a nine-year-old boy was among three people killed in Mitchells Plain on Tuesday night, while two others were shot dead minutes apart near the Athlone Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday. The first incident, police spokesman Colonel Andrè Traut said, occurred in Viscount Street. The little boy, Zechariah Matthee, 21-year-oldCleo Bailey,andMougsheen Daniels, 26,died, while two men, aged 51 and 36, were wounded. “Preliminary reports indicate that four unidentified gunmen opened fire on the premises before entering the house and shooting the victims,” Traut said.
