Siyavuya Mzantsi
AS A gang war rages on the Cape Flats, national acting commissioner Khomotso Phahlane says he has no reason to be worried about Western Cape police deployment, despite provincial commissioner Khombinkosi Jula’s admission of a massive shortage of officers.
Phahlane said work was being done internally as they announced they had taken about 5 000 trainees from training institutions, and some would be deployed in gang-infested areas.
Jula this month confirmed reports that 85 percent of the province’s police stations were understaffed, with 2 392 posts vacant.
Phahlane said: “You will know that we have done deployments of special forces in those environments which are having challenges.”
Phahlane conceded that the police had challenges in fighting against illegal firearms and drugs in the Western Cape.
“We need active participation from everyone. In this province, among others, we have challenges around drugs. We have challenges around firearms,” he said.
“From a proactive police point of view, launching operations to curb incidents of violence, police have made serious progress. We are just consolidating and establishing the (specialised gang) unit. The president indicated the unit will be established within the Hawks environment.”
Last month the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) and Equal Education (EE) turned to the Western Cape High Court and submitted an application seeking to compel Police Minister Nathi Nhleko and Phahlane to take urgent steps to change the way police resources were allocated to communities.
SJC secretary general Phumeza Mlungwana said Phahlane was playing down something that was a fundamental problem.
“I am very disappointed that a senior police officer would say something like that. What he is saying is not motivating to the officers on the ground. We need to acknowledge that there is a problem,” said Mlungwana.
She said the Lingelethu police station in Khayelitsha still had no proper building structure. “They identified a plot of land for a police station to be built in Makhaza, but even today that police station has yet to be built.”
Meanwhile, Parliament’s portfolio committee on policing will visit Manenberg today to hear the police’s intervention plan in response to the suspected gang killings that have plagued the area over the past three weeks.