Programme director
Executive mayor and councillors of Nelson Mandela Bay Metro
Lt General Landu and provincial management of the South African Police Service (SAPS)
FIFA representative
Members of various law enforcement agencies
Members of various components of the criminal justice system
Officials from various government departments
Members of the media
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
It is, indeed, a great honour for me to get an opportunity to say a few words of thanks in appreciation for the excellent work that you have done during the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Before the tournament our government made commitments to FIFA, our visitors and the people of South Africa that we would deliver a crime free and incident free tournament.
Today, as government we are proud of the role played by our law enforcement agencies, criminal justice system departments, volunteers and other role players to deliver such a successful tournament.
You have proved wrong all the sceptics, who always questioned the ability of Africa, particularly South Africa, to host such a football extravaganza.
You have made a good impression about our country and our province to the people of the world. We have seen some of them in the media declaring their interest to come back to enjoy themselves again in South Africa and the Eastern Cape and contribute to our economy.
Despite certain challenges that you confronted during this tournament, you remained a force to be reckoned with, always united, loyal to instructions, creative in the execution of your duties and ready to defend the integrity of our country.
At a very late stage, exactly during the process of the finalisation of deployments, the SAPS in the Eastern Cape was informed to take over all security duties in this stadium, which entailed security at FIFA and ticket officers. I would like to express my sincere appreciation for your swift response to that instruction.
During this tournament, the Eastern Cape was one of the provinces that were tactically ready for any eventuality. We exposed our students from the Bhisho and All Saints Police Training Colleges to security guard training before they were deployed, which proved to be valuable as security guards at other stadiums in the country threatened to strike.
In other provinces, police student constables had to replace such security guards without receiving any training on crowd management in a stadium environment.
Except for the 1 030 student constables, who were deployed at the stadium, there were 1 200 additional SAPS members from various stations throughout the province to perform administrative and crime prevention duties as well as specialized functions such as hostage negotiators, dog handlers, explosive experts and additional tactical response teams.
At the seven official public viewing areas (PVAs), 36 members were deployed everyday from 9 June to 11 July. They were reinforced by 500 trained safety patrollers. The world cup has left these patrollers with skills and certificates that enabled them to be employed as security guards as a legacy.
Close to 4 000 police members in different capacities were deployed on match days and it was, indeed, an achievement to see everybody reporting on time as scheduled and everybody's needs taken care of.
Our provincial joint operational centre, which was based at the Mount Road police station, met all the operational needs and today that police station has been left with state of the art equipment and facilities as a legacy.
As we celebrate the conclusion of the world cup activities, we are proud to announce that all the games at the Nelson Mandela Bay stadium were played without any incident that can be classified as a threat to our visitors, communities and players. It was conducted exactly as the safety instructions and planning required.
The fan park, hotels, routes and team practice venues were well policed and without incidents. Players and visitors in this city had the opportunity to take walks on the beach, visit pubs and bars, shopping centres and to interact with the public freely without fear of crime.
Crime in the city stabilised during the tournament and we would like to thank the people of Nelson Mandela Bay for their cooperation with the security forces deployed in this area.
The dedicated crime investigation teams did exceptionally well. They received 142 case dockets and 131 of them were world cup related. These cases included, housebreaking, theft, assault, fraud (including FIFA tickets), drug related crime, interference or obstruction with the police, possession of stolen goods.
All these cases were collected from PVAs, Nelson Mandela stadium, fen fest, hotels and guest houses, shopping complexes, restaurants and Port Elizabeth airports.
We would like to salute all role players who fast tracked these cases at the dedicated courts, including prosecutors and magistrates. We appreciate the professional investigative capacity of the SAPS in handling these cases.
The Rights Property Protection team, which included inspectors of the host city and SAPS detectives and several experts, confiscated close to R10million worth of FIFA counterfeit goods items. Chinese, Zimbabwean, Ethiopian, Nigerian, Senegalese and South African citizens were searched and found in possession of these goods.
The scalping of tickets was also dealt a heavy blow. Since the first game, nine people have been arrested and eight were found guilty for the illegal selling of tickets at the stadium and one case was withdrawn.
During the tournament, there were people who believed that normal crime prevention activities would be abandoned. They were proved wrong on 15 June 2010, when our tactical joint operations centre was tested very early in the world cup by information from intelligence sources about a planned robbery of a cash van in Fort Beaufort.
The task team supported by detectives apprehended six robbers and confiscated two firearms and two motor vehicles before a shot could be fired.
A big contributor to our success was the support and operational coordination with all the other role players such as the host city, municipalities, the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), air and sea operations, Departments of Home Affairs, Health, Local Government, Sport and Recreation, National Intelligence Agency, Eskom and traffic authorities.
Since June 2010, more than 400 Eastern Cape traffic law enforcement agencies converged in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro to conduct various activities, which included reduction of delays through traffic control, escorting FIFA Family, teams and sponsors to and from the airports, hotels, stadium and fan festivals.
They included 175 provincial traffic special operations task team members, 39 Straundale based provincial traffic officers and more than 200 Nelson Mandela Bay Metro traffic officers.
During its operations, the task team arrested 421 people for drunken driving, including foreign nationals.
The world cup was the last assignment for this task team, which has had a successful 20 months of extraordinary operations that recorded a number of successes, which include:
- arrest of about 5000 people for drunken driving
- issuing of 46 828 summonses worth R25 333 847
- suspension of 2 286 vehicles, including public transport vehicles
- confiscation of 220 misused government vehicles
I would really like to commend all members of this team for adhering to the traffic officers' oath, which they made when they joined this noble profession in which they promised to:
- Enforce law courteously and appropriately without fear or favour, malice or ill will
- Always endeavour to make a contribution in the performance of their duties
- Recognise the badge of their office as a symbol of public faith and accept it as a public trust to be held and be true to the ethics of the traffic police service
- Constantly strive to achieve traffic police service objectives and ideals and dedicating yourselves before GOD to their chosen profession, law enforcement.
We also had our unsung heroes and heroines, who worked behind the scenes to ensure that we have a safe tournament. We had a group of young men and women in the Eastern Cape Department of Transport's customer care centre, which operated 24 hours a day to attend to enquiries during the tournament. They received 2 286 calls through our toll free number 0800 644 644.
We had our road safety officials, who simultaneously embarked on a Drink Responsible campaign around the Metro in partnership with the South African Breweries (SAB).
They visited popular taverns to encourage patrons not to be over-excited by the world cup and drink responsibly in order to avoid accidents on our roads.
Our sincere gratitude also goes to the media for the good mood that they portrayed about the tournament. South Africa has been longing for such a positive coverage as it restored the people's confidence in their country, their flag, national anthem and heritage.
In conclusion, I would like to once more say "THANK YOU!" You have made us proud!
Source: Department of Transport, Eastern Cape Provincial Government
