New Community Safety and Liaison head Themba Mavundla says “enough” as two more die, writes Chris Ndaliso.
Durban - The killing of innocent people at uMlazi’s notorious Glebelands Hostel has left community activists questioning the willingness of law enforcers to end the violence there
Meetings have been held between hostel dwellers, government officials and politicians in an attempt to identify and find a solution to the bloodshed. These have yielded no desired outcomes as more people are carried away in body bags.
At a meeting last September, eThekwini mayor James Nxumalo, Community Safety and Liaison MEC Willies Mchunu, Premier Senzo Mchunu and top police brass gathered with more than 1 000 residents, outlining their plans to end the violent killings.
The provincial and municipal governments announced a R10 million fund to install fencing and control access, closed-circuit television cameras and floodlights.
At the time, Nxumalo said the money would be made available by the end of that week.
To date, no fencing has been installed at the hostel, residents say they doubt there were CCTV cameras and there are still no checks at the gates.
Umlazi police who kept guard at the hostel were replaced by a team from outside the province. This team, however, left the hostel less than a week later, and the killing resumed.
Last Sunday Thandayiphi Cwele was shot dead and on Monday evening, Nhlo Sgwebela died in a hail of bullets.
From March 2014 to date, about 20 people have been killed at the hostel, all shot.
In all these killings, there is a name that keeps popping up, the man believed to be behind the mayhem.
So far there is no evidence linking this person with the killing. One question remains, though: how far have the law enforcers gone to get to the bottom of the shootings and the alleged involvement of this individual in them?
The newly appointed Community Safety and Liaison head, Themba Mavundla, said he had a mammoth task of eradicating crime from both the hostel and the province at large.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily News, he was livid about the situation at the hostel.
The former SA National Defence Force (SANDF) major said: “Two weeks ago I met with the State Security Agency and the Road Traffic Inspectorate.
“The Glebelands issue was raised at that meeting and the main concern is that whenever these teams are sent to the hostel, they leave empty-handed. Not a single firearm, even a licensed one, is found. Yet people are shot.
“How can you not find one firearm in that hostel? It is unacceptable and part of my task is to ensure that those pronouncements to install the security measures at that hostel are fulfilled,” Mavundla said.
He said he would push eThekwini Metro to take full administration of the hostel.
“With all the measures in place, we need to ensure that clean-up operations targeted at Glebelands are intelligence-driven. When law enforcers go into that place, they should come out with firearms, licensed or unlicensed, and all recovered firearms should be taken for ballistic testing,” he said.
Mavundla is engaging the military veterans for their expertise in crime fighting.
Asked about the number of task teams that had been set up by his boss, MEC Willies Mchunu, and the results from them, Mavundla said: “I’d be lying if I said I knew how many task teams have been set up, but these have produced results.
“I’d say it is failure on our side not to come back to the public and say these are the results (of the task teams). This failure is eroding the confidence people have in law enforcers. That’s the area we need to improve on.”
Mavundla said the provincial government needed to improve his department’s budget, adding that it was the smallest compared to other departments in the province.
“We have got a lot of work to do, with very little budget. In the Zululand district, for example, we have less than 10 department personnel to push the department programmes.
“I don’t think the provincial government is investing enough to crime-fighting, if we look at the budget allocations to the various departments.”
When he took over as department head, Mavundla visited some of the 13 districts around the province to get to understand the department.
The mandate he was given by the premier was to devise programmes to ensure that crime levels were brought down and contained. No specific target was set.
“Once you are given such a mandate, the first thing you do is to look at the available resources and the level of readiness by all staff members in all districts. You look at existing programmes and sharpen them if they don’t – or you think they won’t – produce the desired outcomes,” Mavundla said.
He said he made observations of some of the districts and their vulnerabilities, noting all that needed to be done to improve delivery.
“I must point out that there will be a number of teething problems in terms of readiness and preparedness in these districts because of infrastructure and human resources challenges, and these need to be addressed urgently.
“I need to meet all the stakeholders including the Justice Department, the NPA, the Liquor Board and other units that make up the security cluster.
“The intention is to ensure that the whole cluster works in unison. I’ve also started to interact with amakhosi to have them play their role in the fight against crime.
People must understand that police alone are not able to fight crime without the collective effort from the communities in which crime is committed, by people known to the communities,” he said.
Daily News