Cape Town - The SANParks has put out a call for interested persons and organisations to join the Volunteer Safety Services (VSS) Forum, to ensure greater safety and security at the Table Mountain National Park (TMNP).
On Wednesday, SANParks held the first of its two-day assessment and demonstration of its festive season readiness, at Deer Park.
The programme focused on aerial and ground assessments, as well as safety awareness patrols.
While its festive season state of readiness was launched in November 2024, the aim was to demonstrate some of the key safety features already implemented. This included safety awareness campaigns and patrols between the TMNP rangers, VSS, and law enforcement agencies.
Flying overhead was the helicopter deployed to Cape Town from the Kruger National Park for greater surveillance capabilities across TMNP this festive season.
SANParks managing executive for parks and property, Senzeni Mokoena, said: “We are saying as SANParks, we can't do this alone. We can only do this with our partners and as the festive season has started, we want to make sure that our visitors are safe and can enjoy this festive season.”
Mokoena said a memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been signed to ensure the formalisation of the partnership and permitting VSS to carry out certain activities within the park.
While the MOU was recently signed, the partnership with VSS was already in place.
Central to VSS will also be victim support and arranging trauma counselling.
In the previous financial year, there were about 133 incidents.
This was reduced to 47 incidents, Mokoena said.
SANParks spokesperson, JP Louw, said their approach to safety was partnership-based, working effectively with voluntary organisations, community organisations, and Honorary Rangers.
SANParks also works with the SAPS and the City of Cape Town, with the safety forum meetings held regularly.
“At the end of the day, we do have to have a mechanism that allows us to plan together better, but also at the same time to ensure there’s accountability, on both sides.”
VSS co-founder Blade Dyason, who also runs Love Our Trails, said: “VSS is made-up of activity groups or organisations that have an interest or who are active in Table Mountain space, it includes Table Mountain Watch, Honorary Rangers, the guiding community, Parkscape. We definitely invite all organisations within the Table Mountain National Park area to be part of this.”
TMNP park manager, Megan Taplin, said: “We have been working with a lot of the volunteers before but this is a formalised structure where we can now coordinate our efforts properly to ensure that we get the maximum out of our resources as well as their resources… A lot of them are volunteers who know the mountain, are very active on the mountain.”
Interested persons or parties should contact Andre Van Schalkwyk via email on [email protected]