Deputy Minister Cassel Mathale: Police, IPID and Civilian Secretariat for Police Service Dept Budget Vote 2022/23

Ministry of Police Budget Vote 28, 24 & 21 Presentation: Department of Police, IPID and the Department of the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service delivered by the Deputy Minister of Police, Cassel Mathale (MP)

Honourable Chairperson;
Minister of Police, Honourable Bheki Cele
Honourable Ministers in attendance;
Honourable Deputy Ministers;
Chairperson of the portfolio committee on police and members of the Portfolio Committee;
Honourable MECs present;
Members of Parliament;
Heads of entities;
Ministry of Police;
Distinguished guests;

Ladies and gentlemen;

Kindly receive our greetings.  It is with a sense of great honour and humility to once again be afforded this opportunity to deliver this inputs to our budget vote under the auspices of the

South African Police Services, a Department that is charged with an enormous responsibility of keeping our nation safe. 

We have a pressing obligation to continue pursuing every effort that will realise a crime-free

South Africa, where the populace and everyone within our borders live without fear of being attacked or becoming victim of criminality, where our women and children do not live in fear of falling victim to Gender-Based violence and Femicide.

Honourable Members;

During the South African Police Service budget vote debate of 2021, my input was opened with a quote from one of the renowned Japanese authors, Mr Hauki Murakami, which says:  “...once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive.

You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

This year’s budget vote is indeed held post the stormiest years of our recent history, with South Africa and the world emerging from the overwhelming effects of the COVID 19 pandemic. We are not even sure if the storm is really over or we are still within the storm. 

Our beautiful coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal has just experienced severe flooding with loss of lives and immeasurable damage to infrastructure. As a department we have also lost loved ones in both these occurrences, but one thing is certain, we are stronger as a nation than we were before. It is not easy but we are pulling through and we will ultimately emerge.

Now the hard-work of rebuilding our country through improving and strengthening our service delivery mechanisms has already started, a lot still awaits us, but with all hands on deck we will succeed. Hence, as Minister Cele mentioned earlier, we are dedicating this budget vote to Rebuilding and Strengthening Community Relations in the fight against crime.

We can comfortably stand in front of you today and state with certainty that we know what lies ahead and as the Ministry and the family of the South African Police Service, we are ready for the task at hand and we further invite everyone to join in our determination to fight crime.

As we have always iterated, fighting crime is not the sole responsibility of our men and women in blue. But it is our shared responsibility, which should be appreciated and acted upon. Under all circumstances we should always remember that fighting crime is a national commitment that must never be failed or compromised.

Community participation to fight crime through community in blue

Chairperson, as part of our efforts to closely and effectively work with communities in fighting crime, the Community-in-Blue directives and reporting template were developed for implementation in all the nine provinces and about nineteen thousand patrollers were recruited nationally, which is almost double the number we reported in the previous financial year.

The goal is to intensify efforts to improve community policing, focussing on the mobilisation of the community in blue initiatives in order to improve visibility particularly in high crime areas. We remain resolute to achieve our target, notwithstanding certain occurrences of nature, which at times reduce our speed.

Community Engagement Programmes (Izimbizo)

We are continuing to strengthen our outreach programmes in partnership with the CSPS and other stakeholders, under the stewardship of our Visible Policing. Our direct interaction with our people through Izimbizo affords us an opportunity to understand various difficulties and challenges affecting our communities.

We are ensuring that issues raised by community members are correctly recorded and followed-up. We have ensured regular meetings to monitor progress made on issues raised by the community members until closure of each case.

In addition, as part of Izimbizo we intend to include “public education” on the processes and functioning of the criminal justice system as a whole. It has come as serious course for concern to learn during our engagements that our people do not understand how the justice system works and are therefore unable to protect themselves in the event that their rights are violated.

In consideration of the increasing incidents of crime and violence amongst our youth, and as part of our School and Campus Safety Strategy, we intend to intensify our safety and security interventions, especially in Institutions of Higher Learning. In this regard, we will be appointing safety and security liaison officers and together with the Department of Higher Education and Training, the institutions management and student structure. We will also establish safety structures and student care centres to support students who are victims of crime, especially Gender-Based Violence.

Oversight institutions

Chairperson;  In his State of the Nation Address in February this year, President Cyril Ramaphosa emphasized, amongst others, the need for us to rebuild the State and restore trust and pride in public institutions.

For us this entailed that, over and above the interventions and programmes that the Minister spoke to in his address asserting that we strengthen internal oversight mechanisms through ensuring proper checks and balances.

By its nature, the policing or law enforcement environment lends itself to an imbalanced exercise or execution of power. Necessary as this maybe, it needs to be balanced in one way or the other.

As an ancient historian, Lord Acton stated, power has the tendency to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We have therefore ensured that we establish internal oversight institutions, which are part of the SAPS family but are tasked with independently maintaining oversight, checks and balances over SAPS as well as ensuring monitoring and evaluation of its interventions and impact.

These institutions are aimed at providing the Ministry and SAPS Management with independent, objective assurance, advice and evaluation designed to add value to and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our interventions and operations.

These internal institutions include the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service (CSPS), The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), and the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations Judge (DPCI Judge), amongst others.

The Minister has already spoken about the planned programmes and the budget allocated to these institutions. It is worth to elaborate on some of these institutions’ interventions from the perspective of oversight:

The Civilian Secretariat for Police

The Civilian Secretariat for Police Service (CSPS) was established to, amongst others, exercise civilian oversight on the governance, service delivery and resourcing of the SAPS and in this regard has embarked on a theory of change process to strengthen its resolve in contributing to ensuring that communities are safe, by focusing all its efforts on results-based management and facilitating impact on the ground.

The emergent theory of change finds its premise on Chapter 12 of the National Development

Plan (NDP) which highlights the need for an integrated approach to safety and security; and thereby places CSPS at the forefront of strengthening community partnerships, amongst other key interventions. The CSPS has been directed to ensure that the change envisaged through the implementation of its revised strategy translates into practical and visible impact which will be felt primarily by our people.

In line with the National Policing Strategy that the Minister spoke about, the CSPS’ seeks to ensure the progressive realisation of the identified priorities of Government and reflects institutional programmes and projects which contribute to the achievement thereof. Over the remainder of the MTEF period, the Department has identified the following as its revised institutional outcomes:

  • Strengthened community police relations;
  • Transformed and accountable police service;
  • Strengthened community participation in the fight against crime;
  • Strengthened collaboration, coordination and integration towards the implementation of the Integrated Crime and Violence Prevention Strategy; and
  • Strengthened relationship between SAPS and CSPS to ensure responsive policing.

During the 2022/2023 financial year, the CSPS will embark on a consultation drive with all the relevant stakeholders with a view to finalise the National Policing Policy. With the world rapidly embracing and implementing the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the CSPS will ensure that the e-Policing Policy is finalised during the current financial year with a view to provide policy direction and guidelines for the use of technology in order to create a smart policing environment.

In terms of monitoring and evaluation, the CSPS will advance its role to support the SAPS through continuous monitoring of the top 30 high crime police stations and developing initiatives with various stakeholders to assist and empower the police in effectively responding to the scourge of gender based violence and femicide.

The Independent Police Investigative Directorate

The role of the IPID in relation to investigating Police conduct has already been mentioned by the Minister.  The IPID remains committed to delivering an efficient, effective and qualitative service. In order to achieve this, key interventions were identified to accelerate its services; implementation of District Development Model Strategy, development of case screening and prioritisation framework, training of investigators and appointment of Investigation Quality Assurers.

To ensure a wider reach, the IPID will continue to identify and establish new offices in other provinces in addition to the ones mentioned by the Minister earlier.

The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation Judge

Minister has spoken at length on the role and the priorities of the DPCI/HAWKS. However, it is important to bring to the attention of this august house our intervention in ensuring oversight and the checks and balances in relation to the DPCI so as to reduce the risk of absolute power and absolute corruption within the HAWKS.

We are reinforcing the DPCI Judge as an oversight body to be able to engage in processes that seeks to strengthen its operational efficiencies and ensure that members of the DPCI investigate their cases without fear, prejudice or favour.

The DPCI Judge was established as an oversight institution to further engage in processes to strengthen accountability and efficiencies of the DPCI. The DPCI Judge has embarked on programmes to streamline its processes to ensure that it improves its turnaround times in the investigation of its cases.

Gender Based Violence

As much as the Minister went at length in relation to our budget and programmes relating to improving the capacity of forensic science laboratories and combating gender based violence and femicide, It is befitting to elaborate slightly, on our plans to further curb the scourge of the 2 nd pandemic, as dubbed by the President, which continues to engulf our Country.

Chairperson, allow me therefore to share with the nation, the following as part our endevours:

1. We have to date established GBV Desks in all Police Stations since the 31 March

2022. This was implemented in three phases, which can be outlined as follows:

a. 1 st Phase –Top 30 identified National GBV Hotspots and Western Cape police stations by 30 September 2021.

b. 2ndPhase –30 GBV Hotspots identified by each province by 31 December 2021

c. 3rdPhase –Almost all remaining police stations by 31 March 2022.

2. Having established GBV Desks in almost all police station, our focus for this financial year will be to capacitate these GBV Desks and establish Victim Friendly Rooms.

3. In addition, we will prioritise the conducting of Izimbizo and awareness campaigns at the top 30 GBV Hotspots.

4. During the Basic Police Learning Programme and the Basic Reservist Learning Programme, all new SAPS recruits and reservists are now trained to effectively deal with crime prevention as well as complaints and cases of Gender Based Violence (GBV) and violence against vulnerable groups.

5. After the basic police training, selected SAPS members are subjected to further and/or specialised In-Service training courses in these fields to sharpen skills and improve service delivery at selected priority points.

6. The 2022/23 Training Provisioning Plan contains preventative measures for GBV related crime and crime in general and 226 training interventions will be presented with 3736 learners attending.

7. The 2022/23 Training Provisioning Plan aims to have 29 training interventions to effectively deal with complaints of violence against vulnerable groups that will be presented with 3269 learners attending.

8. During the detective training, all detectives are trained to investigate any type of crime, including GBV, and to utilise the available investigative support provided by Crime Intelligence, Specialised K9-Service and Forensic Science Services.

9. A whole array of Intelligence and Forensic courses are also presented to equip the members working in these support services to provide effective support services to detectives. The 2022/2023 Training Provisioning Plan contains 288 training interventions, presented with 5 863 learners attending.

There are numerous pre and in-service training that have been developed and we believe these will go a long way in ensuring that our Members are equipped and empowered against secondary victimization of complainants.

District Development Model

The President introduced the District Development Model (DDM) to bring all three spheres of government together with other social partners in every district to grow inclusive local economies and improve the lives of citizens.

In particular, the DDM facilitates integrated planning and budgeting across spheres of government and improves integration of national projects at a district level.

This we found to fit in well and strengthened our The Safer Cities Framework, which is an initiative that unites a variety of related organisations and departments at city-level to deliver coordinated, integrated and community related services as one of the interventions that must be employed to fight and prevent crime. With minor adaptation here and there we believe we are ready to add value to the President’s DDM programme in all identified Districts.

PSiRA continues to strive to be an excellent regulator of the private security industry and must further all efforts of assisting in the protection and safety of our people. The Private Security Industry must complement our efforts to fight crime and should never be abused to undermine our endeavors.

We are fighting and pushing back criminals in order to protect our people and their respective properties. People must be discouraged to leave this country because of criminals. Instead, we must jointly assist each other in fighting these criminals for we have no option but to win. South Africa will never become a lawless country, never.

Thanks.

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