Durban – The police’s festive season safety plans were yielding results, but contact crimes, such as murder, remained stubbornly high, national police minister Nkosinathi Nhleko said on Saturday.
Nhleko made the comments in Durban where he conducted a walkabout in KwaMashu’s Bridge City Mall and watched police carry out a road block in Durban North before he was due to inspect festive season safety measures in place on Durban’s popular beach front.
“We have seen some notable successes. However, there are areas where we do have concerns. Contact crimes remain stubbornly high,” he said.
He pointed out that South Africans needed to change the way in which they interacted with each other and that the high rate of contact crimes was not only an issue for the police but society at large.
He said that early in the new year on January 5 police will issue a report on the operations conducted during the festive season. While he did not want to go into details, he pointed out that the police’s operations in combating the smuggling of stolen vehicles across the border in Northern KwaZulu-Natal to Mozambique had “put the squeeze” on syndicates.
He said police were also formulating plans to keep the momentum of the successes of the festive season operations going beyond the festive season.
At Bridge City Mall in KwaMashu he received a rapturous welcome from shoppers, while more than a hundred police officers stopped cars on the M4 highway in Durban North as a police helicopter circled overhead.