Vandalised wall spurs crime wave, say residents

Ongoing vandalism of a boundary wall, built by the City as part of the Houmoed Road development, has Lochiel Road residents worried.

New holes are being made in the wall daily by criminals wanting a quick getaway and those seeking a shortcut to Kommetjie Road, they say.

Bernardete Neves says she thought Lochiel Road was “heaven” when she moved into a newly built house on a smallholding in 2016. The wall was already there, but there was no sign of vandalism until after Covid.

“It’s been a nightmare since they started breaking the wall. They come into our property during the night, they jump over our wall, and they break into the cars,” she said.

Her tenant’s car had been broken into and his radio had been stolen, garden tools had gone missing, and her dogs were being teased and having stones thrown at them, she said.

“It is just too terrible.”

Residents had spent a fortune repairing the wall, and the council’s assurance last year that it would be replaced had been an “empty promise”, she said.

Penny Brand said fires lit on the Houmoed side of the wall had weakened it, and panels had been “kicked out” for easy access or escape.

“Sadly, when the wall is compromised, the bad elements do take advantage,” she said, adding that a table and chair had been stolen from her property.

Other properties in the area - not just in Lochiel Road - had been broken into with hand basins removed from walls and bikes stolen, she said.

“Foot traffic is a nightmare when the wall is broken, and children stand outside the gates taunting dogs.”

Pat Fenn said the wall was being vandalised as the only exit from Houmoed Road onto Kommetjie Road was the Fish Eagle Park intersection.

The City repaired the wall frequently, knowing it would be vandalised within hours, she said.

“Crime in Lochiel Road has skyrocketed.”

Chris Dooner, chairman of the Sunnydale Ratepayers Association, said the wall had been built - at the same time as Masiphumelele at the City's expense - as a boundary between Lochiel Road and the Abington Road reserve, which now had Houmoed Road built on it. The wall’s height had risen from 1.8m to 2.1m at some stage.

Age and fire damage had weakened the wall to the point that it was easy to break its panels and posts.

The verge of Houmoed Road, from the north end of Fish Eagle Park Road, was being used as a dump, and while the City cleaned it regularly, scrap metal collectors also made fires there to extra metal from appliances, Mr Dooner said.

“The fires have gotten out of control and set the entire dump alight, to the extent that the fire brigade has to be summoned. On a few occasions, the fires have jumped through the wall to set the bottom of Lochiel Road alight. Fires have also been lit for warmth in winter and on the odd occasion as part of protests.

“Pedestrians have found out how easy it is to break through the wall. Children and adults have been seen to break through the wall, and once a hole has been made, several other persons take advantage of it. Unfortunately, the foot traffic includes criminals accessing Lochiel Road and using it to escape onto Houmoed Road, from beyond Lochiel Smallholdings in some cases.”

The City's Fish Hoek roads depot had provided a fairly rapid repair service but the repairs were not as effective as they could be because of the damage to the posts, he said.

“Repairs are very much a case of using new cloth to repair old clothes. In one case another hole was knocked through before sunset on the day that a hole was repaired elsewhere in the wall.”

Ideally, the wall should be replaced with something more substantial than domestic concrete panels, he said, adding that the association had approached the council and ward councillor for funding to provide a solution.

Ocean View police station’s visible policing commander, Captain Nick Spreeth, said thefts in the Lochiel Road smallholdings area included geysers, gate motors, tools and building materials.

Mayoral committee member for urban mobility Rob Quintas said the City had repaired the wall 11 times in the last year and a half, and planned, in coming weeks, to reinforce it with vandal-proof wire-mesh barbed wire on the section that would allow access into Lochiel Road.