A group of 20 men from New Horizons in the Bitou Municipality are getting ready to patrol their neighbourhood. It’s all laughter at first, but it gets serious when the group speaks about the night’s duty: recovering stolen items.
“The big things here are robberies and housebreakings,” said Claude Terblanche from the New Horizons Taakmag. The group is made up of more than 20 men who patrol the community at weekends.
The group was formed in 2019, but disbanded in 2020, as they could not patrol their community during the curfews associated with the Covid-19 regulations. Then six months ago, “the community asked” that the group become active once again. The Taakmag is not yet formally registered as a safety structure, but is working to fix this with policing structures in the municipality.