Cape Town - A SAPS delegation led by Deputy Police Minister Cassel Mathale and Hawks head General Godfrey Lebeya has presented some of their 10 deliverables during the tabling of the national police strategy and an addendum to the 2022/23 annual performance plan (APP).
Mathale said they presented additional information in an addendum to ensure compliance after the initial APP they tabled in Parliament in March.
SAPS strategic management head Major-General Leon Rabie’s presentation showed that only five cities/ municipalities have been identified for the SAPS’ Safer Cities programme, which zeroes in on community crime prevention, situational crime prevention and developmental crime prevention, and which was initially announced with the promise of being piloted in 10 cities.
The cities/municipalities are Cape Town, eThekwini, Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni. According to the national strategy, high on officials’ priorities is lowering contact crimes in the top 30 hot spots.
“The provincial commissioners are already in progress with this deliverable,” said Brigadier CB Mitchell, who presented on behalf of General Rabie.
“In addition to that (is) the immediate capacitation of the top 30 high-contact police stations, where we want to make sure their resourcing is maintained at 100% at all resourcing categories.”
Top 20 high-contact precincts have been identified in each province. Some of the deliverables presented were to establish economic infrastructure units in 18 hot spots across all provinces, to prioritise the investigation of the Zondo Commission’s recommendations, and to combat cash-in-transit robberies.
Other deliverables are to ensure the territorial integrity of the country through counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism, among other strategies; the implementation of the cybercrime strategy; implementing the 25 presidential expert panel recommendations; increasing the capacity in Public Order Policing (POP) and training first responders; enhanced police safety through bulletproof glass; and the reduction of illegal guns.
Some of a new cohort of 4 000 POP officers will be stationed at the Vredenberg and Caledon police stations, probably by December.
Officials said illegal guns on the streets could be reduced if the Central Firearms Registry cleared its backlogs.
Committee on police chairperson Tina Joemat-Pettersson slated officials for presenting information that was not in the addendum, for failing to comprehend the addendum and for presenting a new national strategy on the wrong platform.
She said she would not include the presentation in the committee’s findings to Parliament.
Joemat-Pettersson said the national police strategy was not part of the 2022/23 APP, and yet officials had presented it.
“What you’re presenting is not part of the budget hearings. This is not the platform to present such an important strategy.”
She instructed them to write to the committee and return at a later date with clarity on their documents.
DA MP Andrew Whitfield said the presentation had limited details on the impact of the Safer Cities project, and the deliverables on body cameras, drones and police safety.
DA MP Ockert Terblanche said the police were adjusting performance targets to lower levels.
“I think, in the main, this presentation is an admission that the police have failed in what they set out to do. Now we need to adjust their targets,” he said. “What they have been doing this far did not yield the desired results. Good intentions and new promises, but I don’t think a lot of them are going to be achieved anyway.”
He said Safer Cities’ reduction from 10 to five cities indicated yet another failure for a portfolio dealing with a R100 billion budget.