Cape Town - The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) has given the SAPS and the Department of Home Affairs seven days to respond to a list of demands about issues of gender-based violence (GBV), human trafficking and other crimes in the province.
The organisation made the statement on Wednesday during its protest demonstration in the CBD, calling for more to be done to ensure the safety of women, children and vulnerable persons.
ANCYL spokesperson Mesuli Kama said while the march was informed by many incidents, the fourth quarter crime statics report was one of the leading reasons the youth league was staging a protest, taking into consideration the dramatic increase in rape and other sexual offences across the province.
“Recently we were told that for the first 90 days of this year about 14 people were raped a day, these are startling and grotesque figures.
“As the ANCYL, we champion the interest of young people, that’s why we saw it fit to host this march and speak out about GBV-F, abuse of women and children and the sex extortion of our young ladies.
“We decided to push Home Affairs and SAPS to work in support of our people. If you look at the Parklands saga, these departments can do something to address the problem.
“Young girls are being recruited even by some South Africans to go and sell sex, even though they will be underage, which makes this statutory rape and police must be able to act on that.
“We want to see audible action that speaks to the safety of our sisters, and that will stamp out illegal elements in our communities,” Kama said.
The other component of the organisation’s protest is to urge police to look into the lifestyles of foreign nationals living in affluent areas with access to luxurious assets, but who cannot prove how they attained them.
“We are not saying foreign nationals are not welcome in our country, but we have a problem with those who come into our country and contribute to social ills. It can’t only be South Africans that are questioned when they have these luxury assets, so part of our demand is for SAPS to carry out an intelligence-led operation that looks into these assets,” Kama said.