Remarks by the Minister of Police, E N Mthethwa at the Crime Turn Around Strategy Conference, Dutch Reformed Church, Kameeldrif, Gauteng

Pastor of Dutch Reformed Church in Kameeldrif and Director of Kamcare, Dr Roelf Opperman
Former Cabinet Minister and International Civil Society Specialist, Mr Roelf Meyer
Executive Director: Prison Fellowship South Africa, Mr Douw Grobler
Senior Researcher at Institute for Security Studies, Dr Johan Burger
Head of Department: Planning at Nokeng Tsa Taemane Municipality, Mr Lundwabu Mgudlwa
Representatives from all Interfaith Organisations present
Representatives from all Civic Organisations present
Community of Kameeldrif and surrounding areas
Members of the media
Ladies and gentlemen 

We extend our appreciation to the interfaith community, particularly to Dr Opperman and the entire congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in Kameeldrif, for inviting us to grace this important gathering. 

It is with a sense of humility and gratitude that we stand before you this morning to engage about our programmes in the fight against crime aimed at building a caring and safe society. For government, the interfaith community represents an important partner in the regeneration of our moral values and the implementation of our programmes. 

We understand that the fight against crime requires an integrated approach which includes addressing decent values. The interfaith community teaches values of caring, sharing, promotes upright and moral citizens. If children from an early age are taught the values articulated by the interfaith community, the likelihood of them growing up to be responsible and caring adults is that much greater. Therefore, partnering with you will spearhead our goals of combating crime.

This morning’s interaction perfectly coincides with our approach of strengthening key partnerships with various sectors. As a ministry, we recently established a specialised unit located within the Secretariat for Police to focus on partnerships. Through this unit we want to ensure continuous engagement with different stakeholders aimed at building and sustaining these relations going forward. 

In the past twelve months, we have interacted with almost all the sectors: religious, business, community, non-governmental organsiations (NGOs), including all political parties in Parliament. Some of the current strategies that we are implementing in the fight against crime were derived from such engagements. Therefore, a challenge we want to pose upfront to you, is that we do not come as experts who know better than you, but are open to engagement, to listen and to learn from each other.

There are several lessons we, as government have learnt in dealing with the scourge of crime in South Africa. To a large degree, crime in our country has a uniquely random and violent character. A greater proportion of crimes such as rapes, usually take place among acquaintances, particularly in poor communities where living conditions challenge a decent family and social life.

As a result of this close-knit family sentiment, a challenge that is often faced by police is that such families do not report the abuses to police. However in cases where these silos have been broken and reported, we tended to see more convictions. While such victims can approach interfaith organisations, support groups and social workers, it is also fundamentally important that such support groups and institutions encourage victims to report such cases. 

As government we have identified fighting crime as a priority in the next five years and have taken several steps to effect this priority. We are currently working towards establishing a new modernised, efficient and transformed criminal justice system to develop the capacity for fighting and reducing crime in real terms.

We are also reviewing the functioning of the police to achieve integration and coordination. As evidenced in the past months, we are actively combating serious and violent crime by being tough on criminals and organized syndicates. In this respect, have begun increasing the capacity of the South African Police Service (SAPS) through recruitment, rigorous training, better remuneration, equipping and increasing the capacity of the detective services, forensics, prosecution, judicial services and crime intelligence.

To give further arsenal to our crime fighting goals, we want to make the point that our emphasis on recruiting new members has been on quality rather than quantity. We are at the beginning of a new era where we seek to develop a new police officer who has the necessary qualifications, educational, physical and operational skills which are to be used in the fight against crime.

Government is also critically paying attention to a more equitable distribution of police resources among townships, suburbs, urban and rural areas. These include training and literacy programmes to upgrade skills of members of the SAPS to effectively perform their duties. That is precisely why the building and renovations of new police stations is a matter that should be informed by factors such as high levels of crime, drug trafficking or even robberies.

In the main, police stations are and must remain the focal centres for coordinating mass mobilisation against crime. Society needs to feel safe and secure the minute they enter a police station. They need not feel more victimised by the very same police officers who in the first place, are supposed to protect them. Such exemplary conduct by our police will go a long way in helping us succeed in dealing a deadly blow to crime. As government, we are currently intensifying our campaigns at all levels to reduce crime, especially the proliferation of illegal firearms and drugs, corruption and fraudulent activities, abuse of women and children, the elderly and family violence.

One of government’s priorities is combating violence and crimes against women and children by increasing the capacity of the criminal justice system to deal with such violence. To this end, we see community policing forums (CPFs) as important and necessary instruments to achieve this goal. We need to move towards a society where the members of the public are active participants in deciding matters of their safety and security.

To achieve this, we want to emphasize and encourage Kameeldrif community and surrounding areas, to be active participants in your local CPFs. In further supporting CPFs, we have over the past year elaborated in a detailed manner the policy around CPFs because not all CPFs operated according to legitimate community mandates.

Through criss-crossing the country and interacting with affected communities, we further observed and established certain negative tendencies by some in society, who exploit CPFs as springboards to launch political campaigns and propaganda.

We shall not tolerate these tendencies irrespective of whoever is involved.

In fact we view such conduct as pure criminality which if ignored, has the potential to have a detrimental effect in our fight against crime. There have also been some few cases of conflicts between some CPFs and some community based organisations. Again we want to caution against such tensions and call for a working-together kind of approach amongst all stakeholders.

We are further encouraged to see amongst us this morning representatives from youth organisations. Our view as government is that marginalised youth represent an easy target for gangs and drug syndicates. We want to encourage the Kameeldrif community and its leaders to therefore pay attention to the issue of social exclusion. Drugs are both a crime and a cause of crime. However, good parenting goes a long way in the fight against drugs and drug abuse.

In addition government is tightening the country’s borders by deploying the Army at all borders. As most of you may be aware, cross border criminal networks tended to utilise borders for the variety of crimes; including vehicle hijacking, drug and human trafficking. In dealing with the illicit regional trade in vehicles, government is also enhancing cooperation with other regional police agencies to strengthen the implementation of regional protocols and agreements.

All these afore-mentioned factors reconfirm a need for a multi-pronged approach in the fight against crime, combining aspects of crime prevention, crime combating, and the improvement of socio-economic conditions.

As communities, we therefore urge you to work with police in the apprehension of criminals and not harbor them. If society continues buying stolen goods, such practices will indeed give a commercially flourishing market for these scoundrels. Equally we are cognizant that police have a non-negotiable mandate work harder and smarter in ensuring that these scoundrels are arrested.

To further achieve these objectives, government has recognised that human development has spiritual and material aspect. We will continue to mobilise interfaith, cultural and traditional organisations for the creation of cohesive, caring and sustainable communities.

This in turn brings the aspect of morality into perspective. We need as a society, to review our moral regenerations programmes. Whilst forums such as these are vital, we must guard against easily turning them into talk shows. Let us together develop pragmatic programmes which will influence the community of Kameeldrif to effectively deal with the drug scourge, house and business robberies, hijackings and crime in general.

The call we are making to you, as residents of Kameeldrif today is that together we can do more to make Kameeldrif a safer and better community, which can be a good policing model to other communities. Together, we can push back the frontiers of evil.

I thank you.

Zweli Mnisi
Tel: 012 393 4341 or 021 467 7007
Cell: 082 045 4024
E-mail: zwelim@saps.org.za

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