Provincial Minister of Community Safety, Provincial Legislature
23 May 2006
Speaker
Premier of the Western Cape Ebrahim Rasool
Fellow Members of the Provincial Cabinet
Members of the Provincial Legislature
Leaders of various communities
Invited guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Comrades
Speaker
I quote: âCrime is an issue that has a whirlpool of consuming emotions
associated with it: rage, terror, grief, violation, and a sense of
meaninglessness. Crime is both the cause of these emotions in the survivors and
the result of these emotions in the perpetrators. No matter which side of the
gun you look at, there is a human being living his or her life, feeling his
feelings, searching for meaning and longing to be free.â Cathy Park.
Speaker
This year we concluded our third democratic local government elections and
celebrated the 10th Anniversary of our most important and fundamental document,
our Constitution. These are sure signs of our maturing democracy. Yet, there
remains a number of challenges that threaten the very foundation of this
democracy i.e. poverty, inequality and crime.
Speaker
Twenty four days from today, South Africans will be commemorating the 30th
Anniversary of 16 June a turning point in our country's history. In 1976, 30
years ago that day, young learners in Soweto took it upon themselves to
challenge tyranny that was, of the Apartheid government and Bantu Education. 16
June remains an unforgettable milestone in our country's struggle for national
liberation.
I would fail in my duty, if I do not mention some of them, thanking them and
their families for those sacrifices. Some of the names that come to mind
include Hector Zolile Peterson, the Guguletu Seven, Ashley Kriel, Nkosinathi
Hlazo, Patrick Madikane, Andile Majola, Fezile Hanse, Robbie Waterwitch,
Colline Williams and Anton Fransch. To them we say " Siyabulela"
Age of Hope - The Threshold of Prosperity
Speaker,
In our endeavour to cement the age of Hope and the threshold of prosperity, we
table the Departmental budget of R180 million for the 2006/07 financial
year.
This budget is against a background of the systematic decrease in serious and
violent crime over the last few years due to the twin principles of integrated
crime fighting and community participation.
This budget's intended purpose is build upon this winning formula to
support, augment and compliment the various budgets from our partners, the
security agencies within the safety and security cluster, i.e. the South
African Police Services, the Department of Justice, The Directorate of Public
Prosecutions, the Asset Forfeiture Unit, the Directorate of Special Operations
and the National Intelligence Agency, amongst others.
Collectively, the budgets of these agencies demonstrate integration,
seamless and holistic government service delivery.
Speaker
Even though we are winning the battle, today we still see various attacks from
groupings that are hell-bent to wither away the many achievements and strides
we continue to make in our province.
Our journey towards realising the threshold of prosperity is being seriously
hampered by numerous challenges that seek to undermine the advances we have
made since the dawn of our democracy.
These include:
* gangsterism, drug trafficking and conflicts associated to this illness in our
society
* the recent sporadic resurgence of gang conflict that erupted in Hanover
Park
* the rise of gangsterism in our townships like new crossroads, guguletu, and
etc where young boys are forming rival groupings terrorising people
* the outbreak of the recent shooting incidents within the taxi industry
* the much abhorred upon incidents of violence during the current security
industry strike
* the globalisation and internationalisation of drugs and organised crime and
the resultant violence it spreads
* the ongoing violence against women and children
* continuing activities of illegal poaching of abalone and its related
conflicts.
Speaker as this Criminal Justice Cluster we will not allow these threats to
advance any further.
Therefore this budget that I present today is one that says to us, that
there is indeed an emergence of hope, hope that the challenges we are facing
will be over come when we tackle crime and violence collectively as a
partnership between civil society and government.
As the department, we have the responsibility within the national programme
of action (of a People's Contract) to build safer communities in partnership
with local government. Speaker, it is important to briefly reflect on some of
our last commitments and the achievements thereof, as it remains the pillars
and building blocks for ongoing work to consolidate our democracy and building
peace, friendship and stability within our province.
Commitments - civilian oversight
In 2005 my department committed itself to further developing our social compact
and the building of social capital and cohesion of communities through social
relations, social network, social values and norms which reduce the levels of
serious and violent crime.
The key strategic commitments of the department were:
* strengthening of the Secretariat and the building of a culture of human
rights through the establishment of an investigative unit within the complaints
centre for alleged policing transgressions
* ensuring that the complaints call centre is operational 24 hours a day, seven
days a week in all three official languages.
Achievements
* The investigative unit, albeit in its foetal phase, is up and running with
staff being deployed into field for investigations and members of the unit are
no longer office bound.
* This operational approach is an attempt to show that ours is a government
that is both responsive to the needs of our community and one that truly
cares.
* The centre communicates in three official languages thus creating an
environment of accessibility and accountability to fulfil the spirit of Batho
Pele.
Commitment - training
* The strengthening of effective and sustainable partnerships through
co-ordination, enhancement and training of community safety and security
structures community watches, Community Policing Forums and Bambanani
Volunteers.
* The curriculum of both the Chrysalis Academy and Gene Louw Community Safety
Academy is being re-orientated towards building sustainable human capital of
our community structures and that of civil society.
Achievement
* The department trained 1 392 community volunteers in the field of safety and
social crime prevention.
* The 750 Bambanani Train safety volunteers have received Grade E Security
Officer's qualifications with further upgrading to Grade D level by September
this year.
* In addition to this the citizenry-training manual for volunteers, which is
geared towards building patriotism and non-racialism, is currently in the
process of being accredited by the South African Qualifications
Authority.
* Let me also mention that 700 of our Bambanani Volunteers have now graduated
to become reservists in the South African Police Services.
Commitment
* Strengthening institutional structures, intergovernmental relations, and
co-operative governance through the role out of Community Safety Forums in key
regions with a view to developing integrated security plans within the
Integrated Development Plans (IDPs).
Achievement
* To this end the department provided technical expertise to develop security
plans as part of the IDPs in local communities as well as providing funding in
the amount of R1 million to five district municipalities to set up Community
Safety Forums.
Commitment
* The department has provided funding for social crime prevention projects,
research, institutional and administrative support to Community Police Forums
(CPF)and all other community safety structures for the development of localised
social crime prevention projects with a special focus on the presidential nodes
of Beaufort West, Khayelitsha and Mitchell's Plain.
Achievement
* We further committed R570 000 to local CPFs, the Area boards and the
provincial board for administrative support to ensure its continuing
sustainability. Currently 168 CPFS and 16 sub-forums are in place.
Commitment
* Strengthen the ideal of the Freedom Charter that the âPeople Shall Governâ in
a substantive manner through continuous interface between government and
communities.
* The facilitation of community policing policy input into the policing
policies and plans.
Achievement
* The department conducted 26 Imbizos as well as a number of public meetings
and nine rallies across all regions in the Western Cape reaching approximately
60 000 members of the community directly.
* We further mobilised 4 560 Bambanani community volunteers who participated
directly in our programmes.
* The success of this programme has seen a decrease in contact crime by 27% in
particular during the last Safer Festive Season programme.
* These statistics have once again confirmed that the only real way to ensure
safety is through active community - government and inter-governmental
co-operation.
* The joint pilot programme between my department and Education on the 40
schools has now grown to 100 schools for 2006/07 and a further increase of
Bambanani Volunteers from 200 on those schools to 500 for the coming financial
year.
* We will aim to drive a mass based civic education programme in partnership
with our civil society. Here our churches and religious leaders will be invited
to drive the mass based civic education programmes at schools that will be
aimed at ridding our schools of drugs, gangs and criminal activity at
schools.
Commitment
* We were charged by the Premier to reduce road fatalities by five percent and
to this effect the implementation of the integrated motor vehicle strategy and
well enhance inter-agency and intergovernmental road safety management with the
objective of meeting the Premier's target.
Achievement
* To this end we reduced road fatalities for the last festive season by eight
percent and by over 35% for the recent Safer Easter Programme (where only 11
people were killed as compared to 27 for the previous Easter holidays).
Commitment
* The continued capacitating of inter-agency co-operation i.e. the High Flyer
Task Team in order to fight organised crime.
Achievement
The 60 joint high flyer task team members comprising of the prosecutors, SAPS,
National Investigating Authority (NIA), DSO, Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU)
investigators and litigators all were sent for intensive training in financial
investigations and the complex area of organised crime, where the department
spent R1 million.
* The training of the inter-agency co-operation is continuing to bear successes
which included the conviction of the following gangs and high flyers under the
POCA Act:
1. Purden Malgas a member of the Junky Funkies gang- sentenced in the 25/09/05
to six years imprisonment.
2. Darrel Cedras a member of the Junky Funkies gang on the 22/12/05 to six
years imprisonment
3. Marius Adonis a member of the Junky Funkies gang sentenced on the 10/03/06
to six years imprisonment
4. Trevor Booysen a member of the Americans gang sentenced in Oudtshoorn to
three years imprisonment
5. Zane Coericious a member of Americans gang sentenced in George to three
years imprisonment.
Speaker
An integral link to the integrated high-flyer strategy has been the role of the
Asset Forfeiture Unit to seize the assets and in particular property used in
crime.
We can record some examples to this effect:
* The seizure of a house in Woodstock being used for the manufacture and
production of the drug Methamphetamine (TIK), currently judgement of the appeal
by the accused in the Constitutional court is still pending.
* The seizure of a house of an alleged drug lord "Boere" Parker in Elsies River
which was upheld in favour of the AFU by the Supreme Court of Appeal.
* Preservation orders were also obtained in respect of five shebeens as part of
a joint SAPS/AFU initiative in recognition of the fact that these shebeens are
generators of violent crime in the community.
Speaker, it is encouraging to witness that our courts are now convicting
more gangsters through the POCA law and forfeiting more assets to the
state.
Commitment - SAPS Plan to Reduce Crime (POSS)
Speaker
* The South African Police Services continue to prioritise within its plans the
various crimes especially reducing crimes against women and children. This is
also in line with the national cabinet resolution to reduce contact crime by
between 7 - 10%.
Achievement
* We must report that the Western Cape has been the only province to meet
cabinet's national threshold by reducing crime by 7,5% in the 2005/06 financial
year. It is our resolve therefore, to continue to work towards the downward
trend of crime. Speaker, just this past few days, our police in the Western
Cape made a huge drug bust when they raided a houses in Table view and
confiscated drugs valued at R3 million.
Just yesterday, again our men and women in blue received a tip off from
members of the community in Mfuleni and went on to raid a house and confiscated
dagga with a street value of R3 million. These major breakthrough by our police
is a result of a continued partnership with our communities.
I need to thank our Provincial Commissioner Petros and his team of women and
men for the hard work they continue to put in. Speaker, also allow me to pay a
special tribute to the 10 (one was a reservists) men and women in blue, those
police officers who were killed in the course of executing their duties in
defence of our communities in our province.
I want to thank their loved ones, their families and those who supported
them while taking up duty to become police officers in this country. We are
truly indebted to them .
Speaker, understanding the challenges of better service deliver, we shall
have to continue to open police stations and bring police services closer to
communities.
Achievement
Fully-fledged police station status given to the following communities:
* Kwa Nonqaba
* Da Gama's Kop
* Kwa Nokuthula
At the same time, Speaker, the following areas, policing contact points were
established iLwandle and Sir Lowry's pass. In addition to this, the SAPS, in
its endeavour to enhance its level of operational effectiveness and efficiency,
established operational rooms and crime offices in areas where crime is
potentially high.
These operational rooms are currently up and running at the following
stations:
* Khayelitsha
* Mitchell's Plain
* Nyanga
* Kraaifontein
* Philippi
* Bellville
* Wynberg
* Cape Town
Commitment rural safety
The safety of our rural communities especially farm workers and farmers
remained our top priority hence the implementation of a rural safety strategy
last year.
The SAPS are to ensure easier access to policing services in our rural farming
areas launched 10 rural mobile community service centres. Complimenting this
service, the SAPS is the roll out of resources including 50 4x4 vehicles.
Confronting the challenges ahead
Speaker
Due to the social disparities within our province the vast majority of the
historically disadvantaged youth are still bearing the brunt of the legacy of
our past suffering from lack of skills, unemployment and poverty.
This current social reality that confronts the vast majority of our youth makes
them the most vulnerable grouping of our society to commit crime.
These gangs are rife in Guguletu, New Crossroads, Old Crossroads and even
spreading to Khayelitsha. They call themselves with names like Amapalestina
(the Palestinians), Ama Afghanistan (Afghanistans) and so forth.
These new challenges however demonstrate more clearly the break down in our
family units and failure to protect our young children.
Our failure to address these root causes will be an affront on the legacy of
our youth who fought and sacrificed there lives for the liberation of our
land.
Let me also take this opportunity and call on our religious leaders, the
churches and all civil society formations to join us taking a moral stand
against the ills that are plaguing our society.
We can only become a crusade against these ills and together lead the moral
regeneration of our society. We owe it to them as leaders sitting here, and
those that are in other sectors. We all have a civic duty of doing something in
promoting good citizenry, moral leadership, especially in these trying times,
when we are confronted by these challenges
Speaker, the department together with our partners will continue to actively
build community partnership in the fight against crime at a local level:
The capacitating and mobilisation and training of various community structures
and a social network will form the core of our work forward.
On youth
Speaker, we will continue to train our youth from the disadvantaged communities
at the Chrysalis Academy.
The department will train 200 youth in leadership and cadreship as well as
Civic Education programme so that they become role models in building a social
cohesion and sharing of norms and values.
On women
We are geared to deliver on the Siyabulela programme focussing on women in this
year, which also marks the 50th anniversary of the 1956 women's march. The
department, as per the Premier's direction, will provide for 400 women to
receive training in trauma counselling by the end of August with an additional
200 to be trained further.
This budget will further see the implementation of our newly developed
integrated anti rape strategy, which is both a preventative and a responsive
strategy. Within the strategy, the abuse of children and women will continue to
receive attention. The prevention programme through the implementation of our
HOOC programme would be accelerated within the integrated rapid response unit
programme with the Bambanani Volunteer programme playing a key role.
Since its inception in September last year the Rapid Response Unit has
heralded numerous success in finding the missing children. Of 192 reports
received of children going missing 184 were found alive, while five are still
missing and a further having been found dead.
The fight against crime
Drugs
Speaker, our policing agencies will continue to break the shackles of the drug
manufacturers, producers and peddlers, through concerted search and seizure
operations, confiscation and the destruction of drug factories. The scourge of
drug abuse and drug trafficking and in particular the drug TIK continues to
wreak havoc amongst our communities.
We would be accelerating the implementation of our anti-gang strategy, which
includes integrated anti-drugs strategy linked to the high-flyer projects (POCA
Act) in the high risk-targeted communities.
Gangsterism and organised crime
Speaker,
It must be understood that gangsters have become the foot soldiers of a much
more sophisticated underworld economy, engaging in serious and violent crime,
money laundering, human trafficking, drugs peddling, arms smuggling amongst
others.
As part of our continued commitment and strategy to mobilise communities
against crime, we will be hosting a Community Indaba and a series of
Consultative meetings to empower communities to rehabilitate their children
away from gangsterism.
Road safety
Speaker, the department will be finalising the Motor Vehicle Accident
Prevention initiative for its implementation in the current financial year so
as to reduce the trauma and budgetary constraints on the relevant spheres of
government.
Pedestrian safety will receive serious attention in the period ahead as it
constitutes 48 % of fatalities nationally.
The public transport safety and enforcement towards the recapitalisation
programme and to neutralise taxi conflict, would be implemented through the
RTMCC and inter-departmentally with the Department of Transport.
Taxi conflict
It is clear that the attacks were carefully planned shootings aimed at
preventing government from carrying out its recapitalisation programme that
carries a scrapping allowance for old minibus taxis to be replaced by new
ones.
Whatever their motives, we remain confident that government's work led by our
Police and other agencies is on track.
We will continue to stabilise the latest outbreaks of conflict in the
industry.
Our police have been hard at work launching search and seizure operations in
areas where there was an outbreak of taxi shootings. In Delft a total of 21
firearms have been confiscated and 108 arrests were effected since the outbreak
of shootings, in Mitchell's Plain, 23 firearms were confiscated and 26 arrests
were effected. In Bellville, 5 firearms were confiscated with 20 arrests,
In the West Metropole we confiscated four firearms and 81 arrests while in the
East Metropole 32 firearms were confiscated with 9 arrests. These achievements
demonstrate that, the police will not tolerate violence within the taxi
industry. It cannot be condoned innocent lives are being lost in the
process.
Social cohesion
Speaker, the social mobilisation of communities to become active participants
against crime within a developmental state, is an absolute necessary
precondition to building peace and stability.
Speaker,
Lastly, no service delivery can be possible without our government's
departmental structure and employees being properly transformed and aligned to
meet the needs of our communities within the context of a developmental
state.
To this extent the implementation of the restructuring process of the
management structure is nearly completed
In conclusion
Speaker as part of the peopleâs contract between this government and our
communities I commit my department and the criminal justice collective, to the
following:
* Bring down contact crime by between 7-10%
* Training of 2 000 community members. These will include the training of 200
youth at risk for leadership and development and 600 women to receive training
in victim counselling. The other 1200 will be trained in citizenry, social
crime prevention and security.
* Deployment of 500 Bambanani Volunteers in gang and violence affected
schools
* Deployment of 750 Bambanani Volunteers on trains to work with the SAPS
Railway police unit.
* Investing R2,5 million for social crime prevention in the Presidential nodes
of Khayelitsha, Mitchell's Plain and Beaufort West.
* A further investment of R4,5 million for social crime prevention in all other
communities identified as crime risk.
* Increase the capacity of the Rapid Response unit by deploying 250 Bambanani
volunteers to find missing children.
* Provision of R250 000 worth of equipment for Neighbourhood watch.
* The deployment of 2 000 Neighbourhood Watch within communities, during peak
periods such as the festive season and the Easter holidays.
* A further reduction of road fatalities by between five to seven percent as
set out by the National government.
* The implementation of a 24-hour traffic service in the province.
* The compilation of safety audits within targeted high risk communities
* The investment of R2 million to implement our HOOC programme for the safety
of children.
* Strengthening of the Security Risk Management.
* We will also be hosting a Community Indaba with a view to look at
strengthening our community policing forums, consolidating our
community-orientated strategy against gangs.
* Investing a further R500 000 to capacitate the High Flyer task team and
lastly.
* We will be driving the moral regeneration campaign where we will be working
with civil society leadership and formations in our province.
Strengthening of the Secretariat with full investigative capacity is one of
our priorities that will go with our commitment to beef up the investigative
capacity of our Police detectives.
It is for this reason we have adopted this year as the Year of the
Detective-to bring the investigation capacity of the SAPS to full strength to
enable the police to build water-tight cases that will result in
convictions.
Speaker,
Let me end by thanking the Acting Head of the Department Mr Omar Valley for
holding the fort since for the past year.
I also want to thank the following heads of Agencies in the Province for
their sterling contribution and commitment in the fight against crime and to
building a Safer Home for All:
Provincial Commissioner Petros, the Head of the Metro Police Service Bongani
Jonas, Head of the Provincial Directorate of Public Prosecution Advocate Rodney
De Kock, Head of Directorate of Special Operations (Scorpions) Advocate Adrian
Mopp, the Head of Asset Forfeiture Unit Advocate Hermione Cronje, Provincial
Head of the National Intelligence Agency Mr Donovan Nel, the Regional Head of
the Department of Justice Hisham Mohamed.
Let me also take this opportunity and thank my family who have been
supporting me, throughout. Lastly, I also want to thank Rhoda Baazier, the
Provincial Chairperson of the Community Policing Board, and the thousands of
members of our local Community Policing Forums and Bambanani Volunteers who
without their sacrifice we would not have been able to bring down crime. Let me
end, Speaker by reminding ourselves of our task to build a new type of Youth so
that we can be able to consolidate the gains we have made. As President Mbeki
puts it in his letter on the ANC Today of 17 June 2005:
"Despite the fact that today we are free, we are still confronted with the task
of developing a new type of youth.
"This is because our movement has a continuing responsibility to achieve the
liberation of all our people liberation from poverty, and underdevelopment,
from racism and sexism, from ignorance and disease, from a legacy that infected
some with a dehumanising inferiority complex and imbued others with an
anti-human superiority complex, from a value system that places the personal
acquisition of wealth above everything else."
I believe that each of our contribution, whether big or small, by government
and civil society, we are making a difference, like drops of water joining
together until eventually they form a river.
I thank you
Issued by: Department of Community Safety, Western Cape Provincial
Government
23 May 2006
