ANC, MEC trade gang insults during speech

Cape Town. 130725. Dan Plato voicing a strong opinion over the youth being marginuilsed in Cape Town in Parliament today. Reporter Cobus Coetzee. Picture COURTNEY AFRICA

Cape Town. 130725. Dan Plato voicing a strong opinion over the youth being marginuilsed in Cape Town in Parliament today. Reporter Cobus Coetzee. Picture COURTNEY AFRICA

Published Mar 25, 2014

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Community Safety MEC Dan Plato ruffled feathers in the Western Cape provincial legislature on Monday after tabling his R222.5 million budget for his department, causing an ANC MPL to walk out while another was accused of having a gangster son.

Plato came under fire for his relationship with alleged gangsters Jerome “Donkie” Booysen and Ernie “Lastig” Solomon.

ANC MPL Dorothea Gopie accused Plato of being happy to visit Booysen and Solomon. She showed photographs of Plato snapped with the gang members.

“We know he loves the gangsters very much. He told us that Donkie Booysen is a good man but later we heard one of his houses was raided and drugs found. What is it with the MEC? Does he receive blood money from them?” Gopie asked.

Plato in turn said due to his interventions there was stability in Hanover Park and Manenberg.

“If you are seen with a gangster it does not mean that you are one.”

Plato said that Gopie’s son was one of the biggest gang members in Belhar who had blood on his hands.

“Does this make you a gangster? No, it does not.”

Later Plato added that ANC MPL Max Ozinsky had told him how he had met gang members, to which Ozinsky said: “It is a lie; he knows it’s a lie. I don’t have to sit through these lies,” he said and walked out.

Turning back to the budget, Plato said he believed that it had appropriately been aligned for the department’s “strategic objective of increasing safety”.

The budget allocation is an increase of 14.9 percent for the 2014/15 financial year from the previous financial year.

“A professional police service is what the people of the Western Cape are entitled to.

“The Western Cape provincial police ombudsman office, a first of its kind for South Africa, will provide a platform for the people of this province to raise their service delivery complaints concerning the police,” Plato said.

The department intended spending R83m over four years on its crime prevention programmes, he said.

The budget was allocated to four programmes which included administration, civilian oversight, crime prevention and community liaison, as well as risk management.

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Cape Argus

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