Keep Safe
In this city, safety was never a product you bought. It is the auntie who notices the gate is open and the guy at the corner shop who knows whose car that is.
Report a concern
Ken jou bure. Know your street.
What Keep Safe is about
Every suburb in Cape Town already has an information network. It runs on WhatsApp, over walls, at the school gate and in the queue at the Spar. When it works, a strange car parked at 11pm gets three messages before it has switched off its lights. When it doesn't, everyone sits behind their own wall wondering.
Keep Safe is about switching that network on where it has gone quiet. It is not a patrol, a uniform or a private company. It is people who recognise each other, and who know which number to call before they need it.
It also means looking after the boring stuff, because the boring stuff is what makes a street feel watched over. A working streetlight. A cut-back verge you can see through. A pavement a child can walk on. Reporting those is not admin. It is the job.
And it means being the person who checks in. On the older neighbour when the power is out for four hours. On the domestic worker walking to the taxi rank in the dark. On the kid you haven't seen at the shop in a while.
Tell us about something
Eight ways to start this week
Do one. Do all eight. Nobody is checking, which is exactly why it works.
Learn three names
Three houses, three names. That is the entire first step, and it changes how the whole street behaves.
Get into the group chat
Every street either has one or needs one. Ask the neighbour who has lived there longest — they know.
Save the numbers now
107 and 021 480 7700 in your phone tonight, not while you are standing at a window at 1am.
Join the nearest watch
Most suburbs already have one and most are short of people. We will point you to the closest.
Report the boring stuff
Dark streetlights, overgrown verges, broken pavement. Dull to report, enormous once fixed.
Check on one person
The older neighbour during load-shedding. The person walking to the taxi rank in the dark. One check-in is plenty.
Light your side of the street
An outside light left on does more for the pavement than another metre of wall ever will.
Greet people properly
Howzit, out loud, to the car guard, the builder, the school kid. A street where people are seen is a safer street.
Numbers worth putting on the fridge
Save them now, while nothing is wrong. Searching for a number at 1am is how good intentions turn into nothing.
Report a concern
A dark corner, a broken gate on a public path, an overgrown verge you cannot see around. It goes to the team who can actually do something about it.
Got it, thank you.
Someone will look at this within two working days.