1. The petition is addressed to:Nelson Mandela Bay Metropole Municipality and Council, through the offices of :

The Mayor,

the Speaker

and

the City Manager.

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED RESIDENTS,hereby petition the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (NMBM), and through them the Eastern Cape Provincial Departments of Social Development (DSD), Health (DoH), and Public Works & Infrastructure (PWD), where appropriate to each, to:

Adopt and Implement the BAYSEC INITIATIVE Proposals by formally integrating the BAYSEC INITIATIVE's Vagrancy, Addiction, and Trafficking Eradication (VATE) program* into the municipal IDP and Provincial strategy, including:

1) Establish homeless person's program-driven shelters for non-drug addicts within the municipality,

2) In obedience to the PTSA Act 70 of 2008, the PWD and DSD must provision and fund "out-of-town" in the Eastern Cape Province in-patient drug rehabilitation facilities sufficient for all adult males and for all adult females contemplated in the Act who cannot afford private treatment, with the whole treatment and reintegration pathway prescribed in the said Act,

3) Enforce Mandatory Rehabilitation by utilizing Section 33 of the PTSA Act and Section 26 of the Mental Health Care Act to obtain court orders for the removal of persons from the streets who have lost control of their lives, compelling them into structured, involuntary rehabilitation/psychiatric care within the provided facilities, until healed,

4) Activate Medical Detox Wards:Immediately repurpose derelict or under-utilized Provincial Hospital wings as specialized medical Detox wards to manage acute substance abuse withdrawal, overseen by the DoH.

More information:

In addition to the above, the VATE program incorporates further simultaneous arms of action including an amended and robust use of the Problem Building Bylaw, Loitering law and expanded Metro Police capacity, and special municipal courts, to arrest and turn aroind inner-city decay, among other initiatives not all named here, leading to reducing, ward-by-ward, the social toxin roots which drive the Poverty Cycle until conditions exist conducive to the final objective, SUSTAINABLE community uplift strategy across the metro, utilising unique local-up innovations.

Conditions on the ground and their effects on the Bay:

This petition is to compel a city-wide rescue missionto fix a system that has utterly collapsed. For fifteen years, while our streets withered, the authorities sat silent, ignoring their legal duty to protect us. This neglect has allowedNelson Mandela Bayto spiral into a nightmare, now branded the9th most violent city on the entire planet.

The Heart of the Struggle

This is more than a simple plea for help; it is afierce demand for justiceand a total rejection of the policies that have allowed this rot to spread. We must arrest the cycle of misguided charity which kicks the can down the road. While soup kitchens are provided with good intentions, they have become unintended enablers of a lifestyle that is killing our neighbourhoods. We acknowledge that many fed people are not homeless or addicts, but for the lost we need a bridge to life, not just a meal in the gutter.We demand a restorative pathwaythat leads from the agony of detox to the dignity of a job. These facilities and interventions needed are for the benefit of every addict who cannot afford R50 000 for a 21 day private drug addiction treatment. NPOs also are neither funded nor mandated to meet the need, the scope is far too great. Investing in this law-prescribed solution is an order of magnitude cheaper year-on-year than treating the symptoms of a dysfunctional metro system and social condition.

We are fighting for the innocent. We must act now to shield our children and the generations to follow. It is a tragedy beyond words that primary school children are being hunted by gangs to serve as drug mules. We are also fighting for our city’s survival. The mindless vandalism of our traffic lights and cables isn't just a nuisance; it is a multi-million rand wound that is bleeding our economy dry and chasing away the very businesses we need to thrive.

A Portfolio of Pain

The warnings have been haunting us for years. A pastor from Ciudad Juarez, once themurder capital of the world, stood in our city and warned uswe were following their blood-stained path. Today, our murder rate has eclipsed theirs. The stories from our own streets are just as chilling. In Ward 5, addicts trapped in their sickness admitted that when the handouts stopped, they turned to tearing down our infrastructure just to survive another few hous of compulsive addiction.

Our city is becoming a graveyard of the unhouseable. Every single day, souls are lost to the pavement, begging for a help that simply doesn't exist. In the entireEastern Cape, the facilities needed to save them are practically non-existent. If we do not act, we are looking at our future in the hollowed-out eyes of addicts in cities like San Francisco or Philadelphia—a zombie-land where human beings lay face-down in the dirt, abandoned by the state. Death comes early on the street. Families look on helplessly.

The Evidence of Our Crisis

The numbers tell a story of abandonment. A headcount in just a small fraction of our wards found a thousand souls lost to the streets, suggesting that across our Metro,four thousand people are living in a state of absolute desperation.The community is screaming for change; business owners in Cape Road gathered over a hundred signatures in mere hours, proving that we are united in this demand for intervention. Then there are conservatively another 130 000 + addicts still hanging on to a broken home life. Only the rich can hide it.

We have the law on our side. The statutes exist to save those who have lost the power to save themselves, yet these tools gather dust while our mental health wards overflow. Currently, up to eighty percent of our psychiatric hospital beds are occupied by the casualties of substance-abuse-induced psychosis, only for half of them on discharge to end up back in hospital within 24 months because there is no support system to hold them up.We must reclaim our city, restore our humanity, and force the change that will save Nelson Mandela Bay. Our demand embodies a humane and dignified intervention fod the victims of Substance Use Disorder, as well as a recovery and safeguard for our business and tourism industry confidence, and our every citizen's right to a clean as and safe public environment, a win-win for all. We need only by this petition compel the Govt to do that which is already law.

Thank you for your support,The BAYSEC INITIATIVE , Port Elizabeth/Gqberha, NMBMetro.

*For the text of the full Vagrancy, Addiction and Trafficking Eradication program, please contact the Secretary by email: [email protected].

The BAYSEC INITIATIVE is a registered, unfunded NPC.