Charles Nqakula during the Security Industry Alliance Conference,
Johannesburg
7 September 2007
There is a thought I would like to share with you today in the context of an
event like this one where we have been drawn together to talk about issues that
relate to our national security.
My entry point, of course, must relate to how far we have come as a people
and as a nation in South Africa. Some critics and analysts argue that we should
have gone even farther than we have on the road to thoroughgoing freedom and
democracy. But, there is no precedence anywhere in the history of the world
where the democratic process took the thirteen years of our dispensation to
arrive at a point, in just thirteen years, where it would be said all was in
place and the democratic process had been finalised for all to enjoy, on an
equal footing, the fruits of that dispensation.
We in South Africa have understood that the process of consolidating our
democracy was going to require a lot of resources and time as well as
commitment firstly to defend the gains made when the democratic breakthrough
happened and to consolidate the process going forward.
There are three phases, which are part of the elements that define South
Africa when our people were simply not speaking with one another. Whatever
speech was necessary as a consequence of natural interactions between people
was characterised by orders and commands on the basis of master and servant
relations. When we started speaking with one another, we mostly spoke past one
another.
But, the interaction today is part of the new tradition we are defining for
ourselves: To speak with one another so that, as we begin to understand each
other, we search together for the answers to the many strategic questions that
we face as we are challenged to produce circumstances that will lead to a
better life for all our people.
We who are gathered here have been deployed to develop tactics to create an
atmosphere of safety and security for our people as our own contribution
towards a better life for all in our country.
It would be a serious miscalculation on our part if we were to continue to
believe that the country's law enforcement agencies can work in silos and
succeed in the work to fight and win against crime and criminality. It would be
silly to want to define the private security industry out of the fight against
crime. That means, we need to discuss ways and means in which we can
co-ordinate what we do so that the specific work we do becomes only an aspect
of the broad frame of national security.
The main thrust of the work of the South African Police Service is to
prevent crime from happening in our country. Of course, there is a huge mandate
on our shoulders to protect our people by prevent crime and fighting the
criminals wherever they may be. That work is indeed the responsibility of the
law enforcement agencies but, if they work alone, they will not succeed. We
need partners in the war against criminals.
The masses of our country, given the size of our population and the fact
that the criminals are only a small portion of that population, will always be
the best part of the arsenal we have against crime and criminality. To that
extent, therefore, we are mobilising our communities to contribute to the
creation of better conditions for safety and security for all. In many
instances, our people in the communities where they are know who in their areas
engage in criminal activities. They, therefore, are the best repository for
information that can help flush out the criminals and facilitate their
arrest.
In a slow but deliberate fashion, some communities are working together with
the police in the context of community policing and in the areas of our country
where that is happening, crime levels have gone down drastically. We are
consolidating community policing through a revised Community Policing Forum and
police reservist system.
There are other partnerships we have formed with the business sector, labour
movement and other civil society formations.
Crime levels in the country are going down and various changes we are
effecting, including better police training, shifting of better police
resources to the local police station and producing better qualified police
managers, are making our policing strategy better. Apart from human resources
that are becoming more professional in policing, we are also deploying high
technology in the fight against crime.
When all of that is combined with developments around community policing, we
are certain the fight against crime and criminality will be taken to a higher
level to provide better protection for our people.
There are three crime types, house and business robberies and vehicle
hijacking, that showed an increase in the statistics we compiled for the past
financial year. Those crimes require a co-ordinated approach that should
include the private security industry, given that it is members of the industry
who guard homes and businesses, whose presence in those areas would also deter
the hijacking that often happens around people's homes.
We need to find a formula, therefore, that will enable us to define our
positions in the same trenches in the fight against crime, and in accordance
with the dictates of our national security strategy.
Issued by: Secretariat for Safety and Security
7 September 2007
