Minister of Safety and Security Mr C Nqakula, Pretoria
10 May 2007
This briefing lifts up some elements from a report we gave to Cabinet as
part of the regular report back on the work the various clusters do in
pursuance of the priorities that are identified at the beginning of each year.
The cluster's report covers the January to February period.
The key priorities of the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster
(JCPS) cluster are the reduction of crime, especially serious and violent
crime, capacity building across the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in order to
improve, not only the level of effectiveness in investigations and
prosecutions, but also the involvement of the community in the fight against
crime.
Partnerships
Community participation in crime prevention and combating speaks to
government's strategy of building partnerships with different stakeholders at
the various levels of governance. Further to advance that philosophy, the
co-operation that exists between government and the business sector is growing
stronger.
The initiative comprises a range of interventions by the South African
Police Service (SAPS) and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), supported
by the business sector.
Government
Crime prevention continues to be the key focus of policing. During the
period under review, several operations in all provinces were carried out,
focusing on policing areas where there is a high incidence of serious and
violent crime. Additional steps that were taken to improve policing generally
and in the high crime areas specifically, included:
* the provision of more and better resources to various local police
stations
* the establishment and enhancement of operational control centres across the
country
* the acquisition and deployment of additional capital equipment aimed at
enhancing SAPS's crime fighting machinery
* the improvement of arrest, investigation and prosecution capabilities; and
processes within government.
Business
The business sector's contribution to crime prevention and combating
included the following interventions:
* development and upgrading of closed circuit television to support crime
prevention, law enforcement and prosecutions
* design of and the improvement of cash management standards to prevent the
theft of the financial resources under the control of business and other
sectors
* contribution to information gathering especially by the South African Banking
Risk Intelligence Centre
* alignment and co-ordination of the work of private security with SAPS
operations
* fast-tracking the implementation of anti-hijacking initiatives within the
business sector (including the micro-dotting of vehicles, automotive number
plate recognition, etc)
* supporting the recruitment of police reservists, with particular attention to
areas of specialisation
* the adoption by business of clusters of police stations for support.
The business sector has also developed standards to deal with the retail
environment, especially shopping centres, as part of crime prevention in
collaboration with the police.
The various initiatives, which were launched during the period under review,
are already showing success in the fight against organised aggravated robberies
and serious and violent crime.
There are meetings that have been held with the Security Industry Alliance
(SIA) where the upgrade was discussed of the co-operation between the law
enforcement agencies and the private security companies. The discussions are
ongoing. The private security industry is an important element of crime
prevention and works with law enforcers in areas like robberies at residential
and business premises. Common cause is also being sought with respect to the
transportation, across the country, of money to various destinations. The
police have offered to train security guards whose responsibility it is to
ferry and protect the cash. The private security industry accepts that the
vehicles they are using for that purpose need to be reinforced so that they are
not easily penetrated by criminals.
Communities
The main orientation of the partnerships is community involvement in crime
prevention and combating. Community policing defines a close relationship
between the police and the communities.
The communities are involved, in the first instance, as authors, together
with the police, of the policing priorities in their areas. They choose from
their ranks the best representatives to work alongside the police to a
programme that is developed mutually and do, together, an assessment of their
work.
We are revamping the Community Police Forums (CPF) so that they can
co-ordinate the partnership between the communities and the police and even
mediate whatever conflicts may arise in the context of the programme to prevent
and combat crime.
A workshop will be held in Pretoria, on Monday, 14 May, where the role of
the CPFs will be discussed extensively.
There are at present 1 101 CPFs around the country, at various levels of
development. Some of them are doing very well while others continue to
experience problems of development and resourcing.
The reorganisation of the CPFs is intended to introduce a sense of more
urgency in their development, resourcing and work, better to facilitate
community policing.
The communities are encouraged to identify among themselves trustworthy and
loyal members to be trained in basic policing as police reservists and as a
force multiplier for purposes of visible policing. The reservists, working
together with and under the leadership of professional police commanders will
do patrols on a regular basis, mount roadblocks and participate in cordon and
search operations.
There are currently 44 356 reservists spread around the country. They
include some members of the commando units that have been phased out.
Public transport
Crime combating forums in the rail environment have been formed in the
Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng to deal with crimes that happen in that
environment.
The development follows the establishment in the three provinces of the
Railway Police that resort under SAPS's Division Protection and Security
Services. The current allocation to the provinces is 418 (Western Cape), 165
(KwaZulu-Natal), and 400 (Gauteng). The total allocation of 1 171 is buttressed
by 188 members who are deployed at the National Mobile Train Unit (NMTU). The
total includes the command structure, the component head, section and
sub-section heads.
Criminal Justice System
The Criminal Justice System still indicates areas where co-ordination is not
at its best. This therefore is one of the challenges that the JCPS cluster is
addressing on a continuous basis. We are spending resources in order for us to
improve capacity across the system and ensure, in the circumstances, better
investigations, prosecutions and rehabilitation of offenders.
More resources
The use of technology and other modern tools continues to underpin the work
of the police. Capital investment decisions were taken further to enhance
policing command and control capabilities. The intention is to fight, in the
short to medium term, organised violent crime. The deployment of the requisite
means and forces will extend over the next three years.
Capital purchases include 10 mobile command vehicles (R35 million), six
Robinson helicopters (R31,2 million), five blimps for aerial surveillance (R25
million), 200 mobile Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) units (R16 million), as
well as other specialist technologies (e.g. Facial Recognition Systems).
Investigations
The SAPS "flood and flush" operations in the priority areas have yielded a
number of arrests over the January to February period, for example:
Murder: 1 800
Attempted murder: 1 063
Robbery aggravated: 2 598
Total: 5 461
The focus on outstanding warrants of arrest and the search for suspects
identified from clues at crime scenes has resulted in the arrest of 298
suspects linked to over 300 cases. The arrests will receive priority attention
in the subsequent prosecution processes, given the seriousness of the
crimes.
Prosecutions
We are still paying particular attention to the case backlog regarding our
court work. Twelve additional backlog sites have been established as an
addition to the original five courts that are dealing with the matter. The
additions in February indicate the following:
* Western Cape: Four additional courts at Atlantis (to assist with the
backlog at Cape Town and Vredenburg), Khayelitsha, Paarl (Somerset West), and
Bellville (focusing on serious commercial crime cases).
* KwaZulu-Natal: Three additional courts at Kokstad, Port Shepstone
(Ezingolweni), and Durban (focusing on serious commercial crimes cases).
* Eastern Cape: One court for Mthatha (Tsolo)
* Gauteng: Three additional courts at Protea (Lenasia), Tembisa and
Randburg).
The Department of Justice initiated a project last year to trace defaulters
in the maintenance of children arising from court orders to that effect. The
project is called Operation Isondlo which has seen many defaulters appearing in
court and paying maintenance. There are new applications that have been
received countrywide in the wake of the successful Isondlo Awareness Campaign.
The number of children receiving maintenance has increased.
Over the period under review 865 beneficiaries and defaulters were
traced.
Corrections
Overcrowding continues to be one of the big problems that the Department of
Correctional Services has to deal with. We have adopted a different way of
dealing with overcrowding which relates to the numbers of people who could
either be admitted to bail or released on their own cognisance and warned to
appear at an appropriate time. The police are being encouraged to use their
discretion to release suspects who pay bail in less serious or minor cases in
terms of the Criminal Procedure Act. Further police discretion relates to
categories of minor crime where the police can release suspects on warning.
The admission of guilt and plea bargaining are the other instruments we are
increasingly using to keep the offender population at our correctional
facilities at manageable levels, among other things to facilitate our
rehabilitation programme.
There are sentenced detainees who have been given fines of R1 000 or less
who continue to remain in the detention facilities because they are unable to
pay those fines. The matter is being dealt with by a task team that is
comprised of officials from the Departments of Justice and Constitutional
Development and Correctional Services. The intention is to identify those
detainees and facilitate their release on the basis of correctional supervision
or community services. This consideration relates only to less serious and
non-violent crimes.
The process has seen 10 978 detainees who qualify for release, 6 135 of whom
have already appeared before court for consideration en route to their formal
release.
The other interventions include the increased use by courts of alternative
sentencing. The process has benefited 3 099 offenders who were sentenced to
correctional supervision while 357 already sentenced offenders had their
sentences converted to correctional supervision. The Correctional Supervision
and Parole Boards placed 6 085 offenders on parole. Those decisions were taken
in full cognisance of the need to ensure public safety, hence the limitation of
non-custodial sentences to offenders who do not pose a danger to society.
National Security
The Ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence has called for written
submissions from members of the public and interested parties through print and
radio advertisements during the period 1 April and 15 April 2007. The closing
date for the submissions was 4 May 2007. The government departments, via the
respective ministries, were also requested to make written submission to the
Commission by 11 May 2007.
The Commission had earlier in the year held briefings with structures within
intelligence services and the Inspector-General. During these briefings, the
services were requested to make presentations on topics covered by the
Commission's Terms of Reference as well as recommendations that will see the
minimising of the potential for illegal conduct and abuse of power.
International co-operation
South African Police Service
Currently we have 125 SAPS members deployed together with members of the
South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in Darfur, serving as a
peace-keeping force in this country.
During this reporting period the South African Police Service had rendered
training to several police agencies in Africa and they are as follows:
* Hostage negotiation: Namibia and Mauritius
* Organised Crime Investigation: 24 members from various countries in the
region
* Commercial crime: 24 members from various countries in the region
* Crowd management: 200 members from the National Police in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC)
* Strategic Leadership Programme: 30 members, Botswana
* Forensic science in ballistics: Swaziland
* Counter terrorism: 24 members from the region
Intelligence
Since the inception of the Committee on Intelligence and Security Services
of Africa (CISSA), there has been significant growth in the co-operation and
intelligence sharing among the intelligence services on the continent. This is
manifested in the number of workshops that has been held under the auspices of
CISSA and also the development of the Continental Threat Assessment to advise
the African Union on matters of peace and security.
At present CISSA is preparing for the Fourth Ordinary Session of the CISSA
conference to be held in Khartoum from 1 to 8 June 2007. The Southern African
region of CISSA is currently meeting in South Africa to consider issues to be
discussed at the conference.
South Africa is also leading the rollout of a secure communication system
that will allow for easy sharing of intelligence on the continent.
Issued by: Secretariat for Safety and Security
10 May 2007
