Durban — Unless the conditions of people's lives were changed the country would not be able to eradicate crime. These were the sentiments shared by Police Minister Bheki Cele who was speaking in Clermont after hearing the concerns of the community over crime in the area during a crime-prevention imbizo.
At the weekend the Police Ministry and the eThekwini Municipality teamed up to decisively deal with crime and causative factors of crime in some of the most violent areas in the municipality.
After having kicked off in Inanda on Friday, uMlazi and Mariannhill on Saturday, and on Sunday the Imbizo wrapped up in Clermont.
Gun proliferation, corrupt police, safety and crime at schools, drugs and scrapyards as well as the state of the KwaDabeka police station which services Clermont with little resources were some of the concerns raised by teachers, school governing bodies, community policing forum members as well as local councillors.
“If we don’t change the conditions of people’s lives we can forget about eradicating crime, it’s important that people have normal lives, and have jobs. These are things that might be medium and long-term solutions,” Cele said, adding that the employment of young people needed to be addressed.
Cele said there was a shortage of police officers in the country adding there were 20 000 fewer than in 2010.
“There were 195 000 police officers in 2010 when the population was 50 million which meant one officer to 220 people. Now there are 176 000 officers and the population is 63 million which means there’s one officer to 450 people.”
He, however, said 10 000 trainees from the SAPS college would be joining the force and of those 1 800 would be designated to KZN, and of that 800 would go to public order policing.
He assured that the national and provincial police commissioners would address the issue of a lack of vehicles at the KwaDabeka police station as CPF members had also pointed out that functioning vehicles were very old.
Cele also said that officials would be visiting the police station which was said by community members and local councillors to be in a rundown state.
A teacher, Khanyisile Ntuli, urged for intervention in getting trained and armed security guards at schools.
“At Mqhele Secondary School a visitor was hijacked and shot dead on the school premises, at Buhlebemfundo Secondary nurses had been at the school on official business and they were hijacked at gunpoint, a few weeks later at this school teachers were robbed at knife and gunpoint and at Eric Mtshali Secondary teachers know not to take your nice phone or nice car to school. We have security guards but you can see that this is not enough.”
Representing school governing bodies Mfaniseni Ngcobo called for more random searches at schools to assist with the drug problem.
“There are shootings, there are rapes, there are drugs at schools. Drugs are sold by people who are cops in the community, we see these things happening.”
An area councillor Neli Nyanisa said after burying youngsters five at a time and sometimes 10 on one weekend the community was up in arms and had marched to the police station.
“Churches are broken into, church bells stolen and sold at scrap yards. Metro police have responded to our memorandum, however, the SAPS has not. We need more resources for the police station including warm bodies.”
She said that community members were disheartened from giving police information about criminals because sometimes known criminals would return to whistle-blowers to tell them they were aware that they had tipped off police.
“They tell whistle-blowers to watch out or they’ll blow their head off.”
Daily News