Practitioner – Mvuyisi April

Mr Mvuyisi April is a Research Associate at the Pegasys Institute. He has for the facilitating conflict resolution, community safety, capacity building and training, policy formulation, planning and implementation of government programmes at provincial and local government level. He has for the past two decades work as part of the initial U Managing Conflict (UMAC) team that developed and piloted the Community Safety Forum concept in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Gauteng working with the Civilian Secretatiat for Police and the Departments of Community Safety in the Western and Eastern Cape.

His experience also extended to IDASA where he worked on the development of the Community Safety Guideline for the Gauteng Department of Community Safety and conducted similary work for the Mpumalanga Provincial Government.

Having joined SALGA he was directly instrumental for the development of the SALGA Community Safety Programme, working with several partners like the South African Cities Network through the Urban Safety Reference Group, GIZ Violence and Crime Prevention, the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs and several municipalities participating in these programmes. As a lead SALGA representative, Mvuyisi also participated in various committees and sessions aimed at enhancing safety in municipalities through policy and legislation. These include the Intergrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF), White Paper on Safety and Security, White Paper on the Police the Disaster Management Amendment Bill and others.

As such he as a very good knowledge of community safety in South Africa and has given presentations on various seminars and conferences on the Consitutional responsibities of local government on community safety as well as its supporting policies and legislation.

Local government policy and legislation.