honourable T Madikane, Budget Vote, at the Provincial Legislature
13 June 2006
Honourable Speaker of the Northern Cape Provincial Legislature, Mme Connie
Seoposengwe,
Honourable Premier of the Northern Cape, Mme Dipuo Peters,
Honourable Deputy Speaker, Mme Zelda Cjikela,
Honourable members of the Executive Council and Provincial Legislature,
Honourable mayors and councillors,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Allow me to extend a word of welcome to our special guests, those young men
and women representing the youth of this province to whom we are dedicating
this Budget Vote debate today. In doing so, we acknowledge once more and pay
special tribute to those young people whom 30 years ago, took to the streets in
protest.
We are still humbled by the unshakable resolve to take charge in facing head
on the challenges of the day and determining the cause of their destiny and
future by a young collective many of who are leading and governing this country
at its various spheres today, some present in this very august house. Lest we
forget their brave role in resisting the oppressive apartheid system. Let us
continue to pride ourselves in their sterling contribution towards our
democracy, freedom and creating a better life for all!
As we celebrate this historic event, let all of us, but particularly the
youth of 2006 pay homage to those who have set an example of how we the youth
of this day and age should be responding to challenges and problems facing
us.
This Youth Day we also call on the Youth Day to emulate the example of the
class of â76 by taking up the responsibility of being at the forefront and
leading the fight against crime and abuse in our beautiful province.
It is important for our youth to take charge of their destiny and the future
of this province, country, continent and the world, especially since statistics
have proven that the youth are the most vulnerable when it comes to crime,
violence and abuse both as perpetrators and as victims!
We are therefore convinced that with the involvement of the youth and our
communities the struggle against crime, women and alcohol abuse will be won and
everyone will be free from these social evils.
Madam Speaker;
Significant of this year is that we are celebrating other important
milestones in the struggle history of our country.
We look back to the historic anti-pass womenâs march to the Union Buildings
50 years ago, the mentioned youth uprising 30 years ago, the first democratic
elections 12 years ago, the confirmation of the birth of this nation when we
adopted the Constitution 10 years ago. And from where we stand today we can
confidently say that there is more than enough reason to celebrate and be
positive.
It is against the background of the âAge of Hope,â convinced that indeed in
the words of our honourable Premier earlier during her State of the Province
address tomorrow belongs to us that I table the departmental budget of R58,717
million for the 2006/07 financial year.
This budget will enable the Department of Safety and Liaison to perform the
monitoring and oversight function as a very significant aspect of the
democratisation of our country, specifically in relation to the transformation
of the police to function effectively as a legitimate institution within a
democratic dispensation.
The Department of Safety and Liaison constitutes the main oversight
structure in relation to police transformation, effective service delivery and
performance, police conduct, accountability and relations with communities in
the Northern Cape, deriving its mandate and functions from section 206 (3) of
the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.
The Department is assisted and supported by the Independent Complaints
Directorate, the institution that is specifically mandated in terms of section
206 (6) of the Constitution to investigate misconduct and criminal offences
committed by police officers.
The budget will also enable the Department to execute its related core
function which is the co-ordination of the creation of safety and security in
the province, as well as the related traffic management line function.
In executing the afore mentioned functions we have planned to focus on the
following strategic delivery areas that will also inform and influence our
expenditure for the 2006/07 year.
* Intensify implementation and sustenance of the integrated crime prevention
and coordination strategy.
* Continue to strengthen and capacitate local government to play a leading
and more meaningful role in crime prevention and the creation of safer
communities.
* Develop, implement and sustain local crime prevention programmes and
projects at each one of the 21 crime weight stations.
* Intensify implementation and sustenance of grass root level community
safety and crime prevention campaigns.
* Realisation and sustenance of a more structured oversight and monitoring
programme.
* Provide meaningful policing policy advisory services.
* Continue to profile and promote traffic law enforcement and road safety as
important components and elements of safety and security.
* Intensify traffic law enforcement, visibility, road safety campaigns,
combating of corruption and law administration.
All our activities and interventions in the province are focused on the 21
crime weight stations, as well as strategic specialised units and components at
provincial and area levels such as the Serious Violent Crime Unit (SVU),
Organised Crime Unit (OCU), Precious Metals Unit (PMU), etc.
Our understanding and reasoning is that we will be most successful in
improving safety and security levels in the province, if we succeed in
transforming the police, improving service delivery, police conduct and
performance of which the main yardstick is reduced crime levels, in those areas
that collectively accounts for between 45 and 50 percent of the reported crime
in the province.
The Department will significantly increase its regular oversight visits to
police stations to monitor and oversee police performance and conduct as well
as foster a culture of police accountability whilst simultaneously promoting
community police relations.
Part of monitoring is also to find out where the gaps and challenges are in
respect of service delivery, policing and policy so as to recommend or take
corrective action.
We will further establish and thereafter coordinate a Provincial Oversight
Forum (POF), Department, Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) and
provincial Community Policing Forum (CPF) Board, for a co-ordinated and
collaborative approach towards monitoring and oversight.
An important development is the quarterly performance evaluation sessions
that the Department is holding with the provincial management of South African
Police Service (SAPS) at the end of each quarter. These sessions also enable
the Department to track and evaluate SAPS compliance to policy and
implementation of monitoring and inspection recommendations.
Allow me, therefore, at this point to briefly reflect on the state of
policing in the province whilst at the same time highlighting challenges and
planned interventions by this Department.
Capacity to police
Our human capital for policing in the Northern Cape Province stands at 4 601
functional police officers and 1 499 civilian or public service personnel, with
an overall male representation of 67 percent and 33 percent female.
This staff complement is augmented by 1 474 reservists, who during the past
year alone worked a total of 88 022 hours.
Allow me, honourable Speaker, to acknowledge with pride yet another first
not only for the province but also the country. The struggle for womenâs
emancipation has definitely gone a long way in the right direction and history
has once again been made when the first ever woman Provincial Commissioner was
appointed in the Northern Cape Province from 1 November 2005 in the person of
Commissioner Zukiswa Mbombo.
We are now eagerly awaiting the appointment of the Deputy Provincial
Commissioner: Policing in the Northern Cape. The post was vacated in November
2005 and the selection process has been finalised.
In as far as operational capacity is concerned progress has also been made
with the allocation of 1 155 entry level constable posts to SAPS Northern Cape
for the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF). To date 554 entry level
constables have been recruited and are at varying levels of their training. For
this year we have to recruit 510 entry level police officers to be trained for
the province.
However, it needs to be mentioned that as a province whose demographics do
not always speak to the national demographics, one of the biggest challenges
facing us is to recruit, attract and retain police officers to achieve equity
targets in relation to African representation and secondly for rendering of 24
hour police services at stations in rural/remote areas.
Over 20 police stations are presently not rendering 24 hour service
Another challenge is the question of psychometric testing and the driving
licence requirement that continue to hamper effective recruitment from the
Northern Cape community.
Although the National Commissioner has approved the amendment to the
recruiting policy by condoning the driverâs license requirement for enlistment
for identified poverty stricken areas especially within Pixley ka Seme region,
it is important to widen the net to other equally impoverished and
disadvantaged areas.
To this end the Department has commenced with a research project on the SAPS
recruitment policy and its impact on attracting provincial candidates. Our
findings will be submitted to national with the aim of influencing policy
change or recommending corrective policy interventions.
The provincial policing vehicle fleet stands at 1 256 vehicles with 243 of
these vehicles purchased and allocated during the past financial year.
The biggest challenge facing SAPS in relation to fleet management is
budgetary constraints that do not allow for suitable vehicle types to be
purchased for the road conditions (semi-desert, dunes, rural, rocky, rivers and
streams) compounded by vast distances.
In as far as police infrastructure is concerned we have opened one community
safety centres and two police stations during the past year in Galeshewe,
Steinkopf and Aggeneys. The building of the fourth police station in Kuruman is
nearing completion and will be opened in the near future.
The tender for the building of a second community safety centre in
Augrabies/ Kakamas has been advertised and construction will hopefully commence
before the end of the 2006 financial year.
Police conduct
As Department responsible for monitoring police conduct, we also from time
to time receive, intervene and investigate community complaints of police
misconduct, dereliction of duty by the police on the basis of racial bias or
inefficiency, police brutality and break down in community police
relations.
In order to enhance police accountability to communities for their
performance and conduct but also to promote community police relations as the
Constitution enjoins us, the Department has commenced with accountability
meetings where we facilitate constructive interaction and engagement between
the police and communities on policing and service delivery matters.
Madam Speaker,
Whilst we admit that there are still challenges in the context of
representation and equity, transformation, service delivery, attitude, conduct,
resource allocation and management as well as efficiency we have to acknowledge
that we have indeed made some significant strides in the transformation of the
SAPS and generally our police officers are doing a good job out there, most of
them are indeed proud public servants who continue to serve their communities
with pride and utter dedication and diligence.
This is evident in the fact that according to the national performance
chart, the Northern Cape Province is doing exceptionally well and is holding
the first position in relation to detective services and second position in
relation to overall efficiency (province) as well as crime prevention for
2005/06.
Madam Speaker,
Unfortunately on the not so good side, one of the biggest challenges to
effective service delivery presently is the fact those 12 years after the new
dispensation the service delivery boundaries of the SAPS are not yet aligned to
the municipal or constitutional boundaries of this country.
I am nevertheless pleased to announce that with the unfolding restructuring
process announced by the honourable Minister Nqakula, SAPS will have and must
indeed optimise the opportunity to correct this anomaly and do away with the
old order operational boundaries.
It needs to be mentioned that the restructuring of SAPS and particularly the
phasing out of area offices and strengthening of local police stations is a
policy decision that has long been taken and advocated by the White Paper on
Safety and Security, 1998 as per the following quote:
âThe decentralisation of policing functions to the lowest possible level
within the SAPS has become a core policy tenet which informs national policing
policy.
This focus on empowerment of local policing aims to ensure that the diverse
needs of communities are met by innovative responses SAPS station
commissioners. Thus, decentralisation will grant station commissioners more
autonomy over human resources and asset management, policing priorities and
strategies they adopt to meet them.â
Since the pending restructuring is particularly aimed at strengthening and
improving service delivery at local level, it is imperative for SAPS in the
spirit of the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act (IRFA) to consult and
co-operate with local authorities, sister provincial and national departments
such as justice, correctional services, health and social services as well as
affected communities and civil society institutions on the restructuring
process and specifically the clustering of police stations under accounting
stations.
As Department responsible for ensuring that policy relevant to safety and
security does not become the exclusive preserve of SAPS as it was in the past
apartheid dispensation, the Department of Safety and Liaison will be
facilitating and monitoring this consultative process to ensure an open,
transparent and accountable implementation of the restructuring policy.
It is equally important for this Department to ensure that SAPS share
information with and explain to police members, their families as well as
communities the nature, extent and impact of the restructuring so as to alley
any fears that jobs or ranks will be lost or policing and service delivery
would be negatively affected.
It is further important in the context of integrated development planning
and co-operative governance that we also ensure that the SAPS restructuring
process is aligned to the implementation plan for the five year local
government strategic agenda.
It is only then that we will be sure that effective integrated accelerated
development, underpinned by effective local crime prevention or community
safety strategies can indeed take place and seamless, coherent and efficient
governance and service delivery can be realised.
Another related policy aspect that the Department will be involved and
concerned with is the amendment of the South African Police Service Act, 1995
that was promulgated before the adoption of the 1996 Constitution.
The Department will be co-ordinating the process of consultation and
gathering of public input towards the amendment of this important policing
legislation.
Communities are encouraged to participate in the process to ensure that
provincial peculiarities and needs are adequately taken into account and are
reflected in the final legislation.
Honourable Speaker,
We are greatly concerned and saddened by the increasing number of suicides
and brutal murder of families amongst whom innocent children, wives and
partners by police officers using their service guns or like in the last
instance a firearm that was supposed to be in police safekeeping.
Allow me, therefore, to reiterate our most sincere condolences to the
families and colleagues of the late members and their victims. Our prayer is
that the almighty father will grant them peace and solace and the courage to
accept the loss of their loved ones, even if they cannot find answers or
understand the entire whyâs that they may have right now. May all the souls of
those departed rest in peace.
While it would be important for us as Department and SAPS to further look
into weaknesses and gaps in the existing employee assistance services, as well
as the question of accessibility of firearms to police officers as contributing
factor to this phenomenon, it is important to urge our police members as well
as their families, partners, friends and neighbours to make use of the employee
assistance services presently available within the institution.
The Department of Safety and Liaison in conjunction with SAPS will rope in
other role players such as honourable members of the portfolio committee on
safety and liaison who regularly undertake oversight visits to police stations,
as well as members of Executive Council (ExCo) who are served by police
officers as drivers and protectors, to embark on regular intensive outreach
programmes for police officers, their supervisors, colleagues, families,
partners and the community at large on awareness, education and advocacy on
employee wellness and the importance of speaking out and creating support
networks.
Apart from the afore mentioned intervention SAPS will continue with its
normal in house proactive and reactive employee assistance programmes such as
stress management sessions, suicide prevention sessions, debriefing sessions
and sessions on HIV/AIDS; colleague sensitivity, moral regeneration and be
money wise. Social workers, chaplains, psychologist and related professionals
are also readily available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any member who
would need these services to avert atrocities and enable the police to deal
with the challenges, both personal and work related, facing them daily.
Honourable Speaker,
This budget is tabled against a vision of consolidating interventions aimed
at realising and sustaining the systematic decrease in serious and violent
crime over the next few years culminating in a 10 percent decrease by 2014.
This target as set out in our Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS)
will and can only be achieved if we continue to join hands as government,
private sector and civil society in fighting crime in an integrated and
coherent manner.
It is therefore important to ensure this house and the people of the
province that the Department is playing its role in the context of the
provincial development vision as articulated in the PGDS and will this year
continue to co-ordinate, lead and mobilise all provincial efforts across al
sectors towards the achievement of the 10 percent crime reduction target by
2014.
As a province, we are making progress in reducing the levels of crime. There
has been a decrease of just over two percent in reported contact crime in the
province during 2004/05 compared to 2003/04. Crime categories that have been
showing a downward trend include amongst others murder, assault, indecent
assault, neglect and ill treatment of children, etc.
On the other hand, rape in particular but also all forms of robbery remain
to be serious crime problems within the Northern Cape Province. According to
police crime statistics there has been a consistent rise in rape statistics in
the province since 2001/02 with a two percent (28 cases) increase in reported
rape cases in 2004/05 compared to 2003/04.
We are eagerly awaiting the release of the crime statistics for the 2005/06
financial year by the national Minister when we shall all know whether our
efforts both from law enforcement and integrated social crime prevention
perspective have indeed paid off and have contributed towards the further
reduction of crime levels as per our annual target of between seven and 10
percent.
We can confidently say that the budget apportioned to the Department for the
year 2006/2007 will enable the Department of Safety and Liaison to deepen and
intensify its efforts in leading, mobilising and co-ordinating even more
aggressive and intensive campaigns and interventions aimed at sustenance and
improving on reduction levels already achieved in various crime categories.
Key amongst these campaigns will be public education and awareness
campaigns, law enforcement operations and developmental interventions
specifically aimed at proactively preventing the violent contact crimes of
rape, violence and abuse of women and children, assault, murder and robbery as
well as alcohol and drug abuse.
All what we do as a Department will seek to strengthen cross cutting
partnerships and involvement, intensify and improve liaison, integration,
collaboration, support and cooperation not only amongst the various safety and
security role players and stakeholders but also relevant economic and social
sector stakeholders.
The Department will do all in its power to ensure that aggressive and
intensive campaigns are rolled out and spearheaded by CPFs and municipalities
for effective co-ordination, integration and mobilisation of interventions take
place at local level. We will focus on making sure that all municipal IDPs
include programmes on the following campaigns:
1. The 365 days of no violence against women and children, with specific
focus on vigorous implementation of the Anti-Rape Strategy, the resolutions of
the Anti-Rape Indaba held during December last year, as well as the Domestic
Violence Act and National Instruction 7/1999 version two on implementation of
the Domestic Violence Act. The latter national instruction was published for
general information in the Government Gazette dated 3 March 2006 and is
intended to give clear direction to members of the SAPS on how to respond to
complaints of domestic violence in terms of the Act.
2. Anti substance abuse with specific focus on the implementation of the
Anti-Substance Abuse Indaba resolutions taken at the indaba held during October
last year.
3. Moral regeneration and building social cohesion and community resilience
towards crime and criminality, with specific reference to implementation of the
moral Charter and the resolutions of the Moral Summit held in April of this
year. Intensified focus on the area of moral regeneration and community
resilience is very important in the context of the development vision of the
Northern Cape Province and more specifically in relation to achievement of the
high level PGDS development objective of developing requisite levels of human
and social capital.
The community remains one of the critical partners in fighting crime and
creating a safe and secure environment. It is therefore important that
communities are actively involved in policing issues and the creation of safer
environments and communities. Community policing forums are therefore important
vehicles for the delivery of effective policing services.
This Department has long been preaching that it is important for local
government to come to the crime prevention party. We are particularly
encouraged that our honourable President reiterated this sermon during the
imbizo last week in Namaqua.
The President also hinted as this Department has also been trying to do that
no development can effectively take root and flourish if we do not
simultaneously attend to the question of social development and cohesion and
that any Development Plan would be incomplete if it does not reflect plans for
social development and particularly plans to address and deal with social
problems such as alcohol abuse that give rise to all sorts of other problems
including crime and violence.
It is for this reason that the Department approached district municipalities
and facilitated the establishment of community safety forums as co-ordinating
structures for implementation of community safety and crime prevention
strategies.
The Department will during this year continue to strengthen and capacitate
local government to play a leading and more meaningful role in crime prevention
and the creation of safer communities by establishing community safety forums
in the five category B municipalities and at least all municipalities that
covers the 21 crime weight stations.
The Department has also appointed an IDP champion to engage and assist
municipalities with the development and inclusion of integrated community
safety plans that speaks to the local crime problems and focus areas for
intervention in their Municipal Integrated Development Plans (MIDP).
Honourable Speaker,
The importance of traffic management services in the context of safer
communities and crime reduction can never be overlooked. Whilst the traffic
function is normally regarded as a nuisance function that only seeks to
generate revenue, it is important for us as a Department to profile and promote
this function as an important element of safety and security and that it is
performed because the safety and security of all road users irrespective the
mode of transport used or whether pedestrian, commuter, driver or passenger is
very important. We cannot continue to lose our human capital on our roads
through road accidents.
As a province we have in less than one month lost people amongst who two of
our traffic officers stationed at Richmond in two separate road accidents.
In both accidents we also lost one police officer another municipal traffic
officer and 10 members of the public, six of who were children.
Road accidents also have a significant impact in the economy of our country.
Except for the loss of lives, injuries as well as damages to vehicles and other
property as a result of road accidents contribute to lower levels of
productivity due to absenteeism, financial losses etc.
The Department of Safety and Liaison will therefore intensify the Arrive
Alive Campaign which as we have previously said is not an occasional event, but
an everyday campaign that informs all our traffic operations both from a
proactive and reactive perspective. Our plea to all road users is to embrace it
as a way of life.
Proactive road safety campaigns will be our main focus in that they
primarily aim to educate and raise public awareness about the importance of
observing certain basic rules in the spirit of arriving alive at our various
destinations.
High visibility patrols, the Driver of the Year Competition, the Taxi Driver
Pilot Competition, Road Safety Bill boards, National Road Safety Education
Programme for schools in conjunction with the Department of Education.
It is important to note that the province has been selected to host the
national driver competition, a flagship project of the national Department of
Transport aimed at improving road safety through the enhancement of the driving
skills of heavy vehicle drivers.
It is also important to mention that Reagan van Wyk from Kleinzee, Namaqua
will be representing the country at the international driver competitions to be
held in Luxemburg during September this year after he emerged as one of the
winners during the national driver competitions in Mpumalanga last year.
Another challenge that we are busy addressing is the whole issue of taxi
problems from a law enforcement and commuter and transport safety
perspective.
We have already facilitated the establishment of inter sectoral provincial
taxi forum as platform for communication and consultation amongst the various
stakeholders to avoid unnecessary illegal activities in this industry,
including the blockading of national roads.
These road safety campaigns are all aimed at complementing our law
enforcement operations, which are in the main after the fact and reactive in
nature and geared towards inculcating respect for the road traffic rules and
regulations.
Effective law enforcement will receive a boost when we open a new traffic
station in the Phokwane Municipal area during the second quarter of this year
and with the deployment of the 30 traffic officers who will be completing their
training on the 23 July, which is about a week away.
Part of our strategy to enhance our effectiveness in policing our roads is
the clear permanent branding of all traffic vehicles to enhance visibility of
these vehicles. It is a fact that the branding of vehicles used for traffic law
enforcement vehicles presently leave much to be desired and we can not continue
to have a situation where we have private vehicles that except for the blue
light on the roofs are altogether not marked in any way as traffic law
enforcement vehicles.
It is also a fact that this practice also poses a challenge in that it
creates a conducive environment for criminals to abuse this practice for
criminal purposes such as hijacking, in transit robberies and escaping arrest
whilst illegally using private vehicles with blue lights and therefore posing
as police or traffic officers.
Honourable Speaker,
It is a well known fact that the Department of Safety and Liaison has for a
very long time in fact since its inception some 10 years ago had been severely
understaffed. We are glad to announce that the transfer of the traffic
management function to our Department has indeed assisted us to move
significantly in respect of attaining the critical mass which we needed
desperately, in that funds could be allocated for the filling of the most
critical posts in the Civilian Secretariat Programme as well as finance and
corporate support services.
We will continue this year to increase our capacity through filling of a
number of identified posts across all programmes as well as through training
and development. For the first time the department is introducing a bursary
scheme to augment the skills development levy allocation for targeted capacity
building in key delivery areas.
Our capacity enhancement programme will be concentrated around the following
functions:
a) Finance
b) Supply Chain Management Unit
c) Management and Financial Accounting support
d) Revenue collection to enhance departmentâs capacity to reconcile, verify
and collect all outstanding revenue due to province
Corporate services
Security and records management, policy and planning, information technology
(IT) and communication, transport management, human resource management.
Line functions:
* Monitoring and oversight,
* Social crime prevention,
* Community police relations,
* Road safety,
* Natis helpdesk and transport law administration (abnormal loads and
permits),
* Inspectorate.
It however needs to be mentioned that the Department is faced by the
challenge of lack of sufficient office accommodation that could hamper the
implementation of our recruitment plans. Currently the Departmentâs provincial
office is operating from five different premises, a situation that is not
conducive for effective management and supervision. We are however in the
process of investigating options to overcome this constraint.
Madam Speaker,
This budget that we are presenting to this House is one that says to us
indeed there is an emergence of hope, hope that the challenges and problems
relating to crime facing our province will defeated when we tackle crime and
violence collectively as a partnership between the private sector, civil
society and government.
We can collectively become crusades against these evils and challenges as
well as collectively lead the moral regeneration of our society. We owe it to
our youth sitting here and those that are in other sectors.
This call is necessitated by the fact that we understand that the role of
everyone is central in the fight against crime and produces lasting
results.
The budget of the Department of Safety, Security and Liaison for the
financial year 2006/07 should be viewed within the context of making our
communities optimistic about their future and the future of our province.
The provincial crime prevention strategy is central to maintaining this hope
and strengthening our peopleâs confidence in safety and security services
offered by government institutions.
In conclusion, Madam Speaker,
I also wish to express my sincere appreciation to first and foremost our
honourable Premier Mme Dipuo Peters. Thank you very much honourable Premier for
your visionary leadership, guidance and support; honourable colleagues in the
provincial ExCo and legislature for your support and guidance.
Provincial Police Commissioner Mbombo and her management team as well as all
members of SAPS including reservists and civilian personnel, for a job well
done in ensuring the safety and security of people of the Northern Cape.
All the various stakeholders and role players, volunteers, government
officials particularly those in the Justice Crime Prevention Security (JCPS)
Cluster, communities, business, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and
community based organisations (CBOs), community policing forums (CPF) and
community safety forums (CSFs) for all the inputs and efforts, co-operation and
assistance.
Lastly but not least my Department, team safety for diligently executing the
plans that are funded by the budget tabled here today.
Honourable Speaker, I now table the budget for safety and liaison in
anticipation of an insightful and constructive debate.
I thank you!
Issued by: Department of Safety and Liaison, Northern Cape Provincial
Government
13 June 2006
