16 new proto team members now ready to safeguard their communities

Another 16 AfriForum neighbourhood watch members successfully completed the organisations proto team training course this past week. Members from branches in Lichtenburg, Brits, Songloed, Midlands, Paulpietersburg, Margate, Utrecht and Vryheid underwent the week-long training presented in northern KwaZulu-Natal. They now form part of the more than 230 specialised neighbourhood watch members, known as proto team members, who have been trained by AfriForum’s Community Safety Division.

The course offers specialised training in tactical firearms handling, practical self-defence, bleeding control, various relevant legal aspects, handling a crime scene, setting up traffic control points and evacuation under fire, among other things. The course also focuses on gathering information, setting up effective observation points and effective radio use.

Proto teams function as part of AfriForum’s neighbourhood watches and act as first responders to serious crimes. In-depth and advanced training is therefore essential for these members, who serve their communities voluntarily.  

According to Jacques Broodryk, AfriForum’s Chief Spokesperson for Community Safety, the proto team course is not easy and designed to prepare members for challenging and dangerous situations they may find themselves in while performing their duties. For example, members must successfully complete a series of night shooting drills. As part of these sessions, flashing lights are used to disorientate members and make the exercise as realistic as possible. In another drill, participants have to provide cover fire, while calling for assistance over the radio before they need to evacuate a wounded member.

“These exercises, where members have to function under pressure and shoot with live ammunition, expose them to situations they can expect in real life. It’s a priority for AfriForum to present the training in as realistic a manner as possible. This is what makes the civil rights organisations’ proto teams so successful in real life,” says Broodryk.

AfriForum has already trained more than 230 proto team members thus far, each of whom play an active role in AfriForum’s 177 neighbourhood and farm watch structures nationwide. Nearly 11 000 volunteers are involved in these structures.

Get involved with your local AfriForum neighbourhood watch today. Visit www.afriforumbuurtwag.co.za for more information.