A city Looking after itself in the dark | A Cape Town Story

The room was dark on purpose. The screens weren’t.

A private security control room in Cape Town. Night shift. Alarm activations are coming in. A map lighting up. Vehicles are quickly dispatched and responding. Someone is on the phone to the homeowner. Someone else already on the radio to the response team on the ground — and, when it mattered, to SAPS, the local Police to the neighbourhood watch, to the community WhatsApp group.

What surprised me most wasn’t the tech.

It was how joined up it all was.

Private security, police, community initiatives, neighbourhood watch — all talking to each other in real time, all pulling the same way.

I sat in that chair for hours and watched people quietly look after a city most of the world only reads about in headlines.

That’s the film. That’s @acapetownstory

UBUNTU – A Cape Town Story. Coming very soon.

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About: The documentary was made through @noexcusefilms — our UK production company.

A small team. No big crew getting in the way of the conversation. No agenda we were trying to smuggle in.

Three things we promised ourselves before we boarded the plane, and held to from the first day of filming to the last:

– No sensationalism.
– No shortcuts.
– No excuses.

That’s the company. That’s how we work. And that, more than anything, is why people who don’t normally talk to cameras sat down and talked to ours.