Founded in 2008, the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) is a membership-based social movement made up of 12 branches, located mainly in informal settlements across Khayelitsha, Cape Town. Since its formation, the SJC has worked to advance the constitutional rights to life, dignity, equality, freedom and safety for all people, but especially those living in informal settlements across South Africa. Their campaigns are based on ongoing research, education, and advocacy and divided across two programmers. The Local Government Programmer leads the work on sanitation, budgets, and urban land. The Safety and Justice Programmer is focused on policing and the criminal justice system.
Purpose
The SJC believes in accountable and effective government, and the democratic participation of communities in developing policy and the implementation of services. As an organization, the SJC is not aligned to any political party. The SJC's campaigns are based on ongoing research, education, and advocacy. Their advocacy works come in many forms including formal submissions on policy and budgets, engagement with government, memorandums, protest marches, and other forms of public and legal action. The SJC's work is divided into two main programmes: Local, Government and Safety, and Justice.
Programmes
Safety and Justice
This program is designed to make Khayelitsha and all of South Africa a safer place where there is improved access to justice and a better working relationship between the police and communities.
Khayelitsha and safety
Khayelitsha is one of the most unsafe areas in South Africa and is similar to the conditions in townships across the country. It has an overworked and under-resourced criminal justice system. For years, the SJC and partner organizations monitored crime and safety in Khayelitsha and identified many problems such as poor police investigations, lack of support for victims of crime, long response times when police are called, dockets disappearing from court and a lack of support for police. The South African Police Service (SAPS), often the only recourse that poor and vulnerable people have, is unable to ensure residents safety. Apartheid era resource allocations persist resulting in the Khayelitsha cluster being allocated less police officers per capita than those serving formerly white and coloured areas in the city, and by and large the least experienced detectives.
Campaign for a commission of inquiry into policing in Khayelitsha
More than 10 years of struggle by an alliance of communities, organizations, and social movements led to the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry into policing in Khayelitsha – this became known as the O’Regan-Pikoli Commission of Inquiry. For years, we tried to get government and the police to listen to these concerns and improve conditions. The Commission is very important for changing the Apartheid state, especially the police. It is providing a way to make sure there is long term change in the criminal justice system, particularly in poor and working class areas. The National Minister of Police tried to stop the commission in 2012 and 2013, but he lost in both the Western Cape High Court and then in the South African Constitutional Court.
The commission held its public hearings in early 2014 and released its final report on 25 August 2014. The SJC and partner organizations are now working on ensuring the implementation of its 20 recommendations, which the Commission identified as being key to making Khayelitsha a safer place. The Commission radically altered the nature of participatory government in the sphere of safety, policing, and justice.
Local government
The local government programme of the SJC aims at improving the performance and accountability of the city government of Cape Town and the provincial government of Western Cape. To this end, the SJC scrutinizes and highlights the legal obligations of the respective governments and addresses the problems that arise when the governments fail to meet those obligations. These problems are brought to the attention of the city and provincial government and the SJC works to pressure the governments into correcting the problems. The SJC also undertakes a series of education campaigns designed to empower those living in informal settlements to take steps to address the problems themselves.