Table Mountain crime: 'Lack of commitment' drives Visitor Safety Services to withdraw from agreement with SANParks

CapeTalk's John Maytham gets more information from Frank Dwyer, founding member of VSS.

A new report from Friends of Table Mountain suggests that a spike in attacks in Table Mountain National Park (TMNP) this year could result in 2025 breaking the record for the most violent crime on the mountain to date.

There is also now the news that the Visitor Safety Services group has withdrawn from the Volunteer Safety Services (VSS) initiative with TMNP, and with SANParks as the primary management authority.

RELATED: Record-breaking year for violent crime on Table Mountain: 'Women 70% more likely to be attacked'

The five founding members describe the VSS as 'a passionate and collaborative effort' by civil society to help TMNP address the growing safety concerns in
the Park.

They attribute their withdrawal to what they say is continued resistance, lack of focus and priority, inadequate communication, and unmet commitments from TMNP management.

While SANParks has publicly spoken about their commitment to visitor safety, and positioned VSS as a key vehicle for volunteer engagement, their actions have not reflected this support, VSS says in a statement.

In conversation with John Maytham, founding member Frank Dwyer cites the promised launch of safety huts at Platteklip Gorge and Lion’s Head as just one example of this.

"The project was meant to be finished before Easter. After Easter we found it had been paused or cancelled - we're still not too sure which, without telling us..It was actually a year ago that this was proposed and we'd raised funds for it."

Frank Dwyer, Founder Member - Visitor Safety Services

Dwyer acknowledges that crime on Table Mountina is an extremely difficult problem, but says addressing it requires coordination between SANParks as the custodians, Cape Town law enforcement, the police and the community.

"VSS was coordinating the neighbourhood watches, law enforcement and SANParks, but this needs to be DRIVEN by SANParks. We bel there should be a security specialist appointed whose sole job it is to manage this - it needs an expert and we're in the main tour guides. You need that level of expertise and we just feel there is no commitment from SANParks to do that."

Frank Dwyer, Founder Member - Visitor Safety Services

"They don't have the capacity and until they commit to gettig that capacity you can bring in all the volunteers you like... It all falls onto the manager of SANParks/TMNP and she's got a big job and has been doing a wonderful job compared to previously."

Frank Dwyer, Founder Member - Visitor Safety Services

What could bring VSS back into the agreement is if a specialist would be appointed to be in charge of coordinating these different arms of managing crime, Dwyer says.

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to Dwyer's argument