Cops unleash secret weapon in crime-ravaged Philippi East: soccer boots

How do you build trust between police and a crime-ravaged community hollowed out of hope? 

You get everybody to play soccer and netball together. 

That's what happened on Mandela Day (July 18) in Philippi East, where a series of unusual exhibition and youth sports matches put a smile on the face of a neighbourhood better known for crime headlines than good sportsmanship.

The community sports day brought together stakeholders from different walks of life within Ward 35, Philippi East, among them local police, neighbourhood watch, businesspeople, government officials, and community leaders.  People more accustomed to butting heads at fiery community meetings were suddenly passing to each other, or weaving past each other, on the soccer pitch. The end result was a successful team building exercise that helped break down barriers and promote collaboration.

The Mandela Day tournament was the culmination of a three-week Philippi East sports tournament over the school holidays, involving 503 children participating in 147 soccer and netball matches. 

The event was an offshoot of an ongoing youth soccer league led by Non-Profit Organisation Beautiful Gate, which runs multiple programmes aimed at diverting youth away from crime. Police and community stakeholders suggested a community-building event that could help restore trust in the police, in a context where many residents were too fearful to report crime. "This led to the tournament that we hosted together," said Vaughan Stannard, Beautiful Gate director of collaboration.

While community sports days are not altogether common, in Philippi East it was groundbreaking, Stannard said. "The difference for us is that it is not the typical thing that happens in Philippi East because it is known to be a place you don't go to because residents don't have freedom of movement and association -- it's such a violent community. People have lost the freedom to do communal things." 

Beautiful Gate is also part of a broader public-private initiative striving to reduce crime and build community cohesion. Led by the Cape Chamber, this project unites police, business and community stakeholders in a multi-pronged technology-driven crimefighting push involving drones, surveillance cameras and AI under a joint operation management structure. The project is currently being implemented, with a view to creating a model that can be implemented at other crime hotspots. 

Dee Moskoff, chairperson of the Cape Chamber's Non Profit Portfolio Committee, said community events like the Mandela Day sports tournament help create the social cohesion needed to make community upliftment possible : "Because crime is a systemic risk that directly threatens localised growth, sustainable precinct safety and business continuity cannot be achieved through security measures alone. Fostering a stable, resilient environment for commerce requires building active, relational bridges where local enterprises and surrounding communities continuously consider each other's positions to earn mutual trust. Non-profit organisations are uniquely positioned to serve as the vital, non-partisan facilitators of this delicate, ongoing dialogue, transforming social cohesion into a powerful driver of economic stability," Moskoff said.