A Few Kilometres, Two Realities: Reclaiming Cape Town’s Economic Prospects

On Tuesday morning the Athlone Stadium hosted an upbeat panel discussion about the suburb's bright prospects. The suburb is well located, has an existing business hub, and a long history of civic leadership. 

That same morning, just 5km down Klipfontein Road that flanks the stadium, police investigators were still combing the scene of the latest mass shooting – five people gunned down on Monday at a house in Gugulethu. 

Two opposite faces of Cape Town, just a few kilometres and 24 hours apart; one moment a City of immense beauty and hope, posed for growth, the next a place of fear and despair. 

How do we reconcile this existential see-saw that increasingly defines us, both across our local communities and our broader nation?

If the answer were simple, we would have solved the problem by now.

What we do know is that we will solve nothing by sitting back and watching crime stonewall our prospects.

Fast forward to Philippi East, a further four kilometres down the road from Gugulethu. There police were this month playing soccer with community leaders, in a youth sports day aimed at building trust in another crime-ravaged area. As we report elsewhere in this newsletter, the event was part of an ongoing soccer league that diverts youngsters away from crime. 

At the same time business stakeholders in Philippi East are uniting in a technology-driven collaboration with local law enforcement – a model of future crimefighting coordination and success.

People leading these projects are the trailblazers, the pioneers and visionaries. As always, they need our support. 

The truth hovering over Athlone and Gugulethu and Philippi East is that the distance between success and failure is less than a few kilometres, or hours. 

To bridge the gap, we must define ourselves by our triumphs rather than our failures. 

To do this, we need to stand up and lead the change we seek.

John Lawson, CEO of the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry