Since its formation in 2008, the Social Justice Coalition ("the SJC") has worked to advance the constitutional rights to life, dignity, equality, freedom and safety for all people, but especially those living in informal settlements across South Africa. Founded in 2008, the SJC is a membership-based social movement made up of 12 branches, located mainly in informal settlements across Khayelitsha, Cape Town. Their campaigns are based on ongoing research, education, and advocacy and divided across two programmers. The Local Government Programmer leads the work on sanitation, budgets, and urban land. The Safety and Justice Programmed is focused on policing and the criminal justice system. Purpose The SJC believes in accountable and effective government and the democratic participation of communities in developing policy and the implementation of services. As an organization the SJC is not aligned to any political party. The SJC's campaigns are based on ongoing research, education, and advocacy. Their advocacy works comes in many forms including formal submissions on policy and budgets, engagement with government, memorandums, protest marches, and other forms of public and legal action. The SJC's work is divided into two main programmes: Local Government and Safety and Justice. Programmes Safety and Justice This program is designed to make Khayelitsha and all of South Africa a safer place where there is improved access to justice and a better working relationship between the police and communities. Khayelitsha and safety Khayelitsha is one of the most unsafe areas in South Africa and is similar to the conditions in townships across the country. It has an over-worked and under-resourced criminal justice system. For years the SJC and partner organizations monitored crime and safety in Khayelitsha and identified many problems such as poor police investigations, lack of support for victims of crime, long response times when police are called, dockets disappearing from court and a lack of support for police. The South African Police Service (SAPS), often the only recourse that poor and vulnerable people have, is unable to ensure residents safety. Apartheid era resource allocations persist resulting in the Khayelitsha cluster being allocated less police officers per capita than those serving formerly white and coloured areas in the city and by and large the least experienced detectives. Campaign for a commission of inquiry into policing in Khayelitsha More than 10 years of struggle by an alliance of communities, organizations, and social movements led to the establishment of a Commission