B Cele: Opening of Malangeni Multi-Purpose Community Centre

26 July 2007

All protocol observed.

There is nothing that makes me happy like being part of the launch of a
project that will impact positively on the lives of ordinary people. Last week,
I was presenting 171 Amakhosi with certificates for having taken part in a
crime-management course at the University of Zululand, and I told them that
there is nothing that makes me happy than seeing people relieved that they now
have a bridge or road in accordance with my department's mandate.

Wherever I go in KwaZulu-Natal, I am telling people that it is my
department's short and long-term goal to ensure that every community amenity;
like a school, community hall, clinic or Multi-Purpose Community Centre, etc.,
must be reported to my department if there is no access road leading to it.

Community centres are important precisely because this is where all
community related matters are discussed and resolved. The Department of
Community Safety and Liaison, for which I am responsible as its political
principal, stands to benefit from the government's commitment to provide
community facilities like the one that we are launching today.

This centre is an ideal model and an epitome of the government's Integrated
Development Plan (IDP). This place will not only have a Community Safety
Centre, but there will be a Ward Councillor Consultation Office, Department of
Social Welfare, Department of Home Affairs, and Office for Special Projects �
Women, Disabled, Youth and HIV and AIDS Council.

Needless to say, this centre is a perfect platform in which the work of the
newly formed Justice and Crime-Prevention System (JCPS) will find expression.
You will recall that the provincial government gave my department to host a
crime summit which was held at the Durban City Hall this year. The summit
appointed a special committee that was subsequently launched at the
Pietermaritzburg Royal Showgrounds.

The JCPS has a mandate to develop and mould members of society in a holistic
manner. The JCPS include stakeholders such as Social Welfare, Justice,
Education, Home Affairs, Sports and Recreation, Community Safety and
Liaison.

Some of the things that the JCPS is tasked to achieve include the
following:

* relocate homeless children on the street by identifying places of safety
and potential new places of safety
* give children a proper identity such as ID documents etc
* trace parents or relatives of the children and establish educational and
recreational facilities for children
* promote moral regeneration by preventing crime in all communities. Here the
focus will be on building family units, the family value system and community
structures
* the JCPS will target traditional and religious structures and provide crime
prevention training to these structures which will anchor communities in
dialogue to promote peace and nation building.

Municipalities are expected to deal with dilapidated buildings and improve
the environment which is often a potential home for the homeless and criminals.
The Multi-Purpose Community Centre can only be expected to be a home for the
JCPS. This is a home for community functions, resolving community challenges
and finding solutions to joblessness, poverty and such societal ills as
crime.

I congratulate you for this and I trust that it will not be a white
elephant, but a meaningful and productive venue in which society benefits.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Transport, Community Safety and Liaison,
KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government
26 July 2007