A response to MPL Melusi Kama's opinion piece, “Mayor Dan Plato does not care and is an enemy of the poor”.
by Reagen Allen
It is regrettable the ANC in the Western Cape resorted to a personal attack on the character of the executive mayor of Cape Town and misconstrues facts on the state of policing in the province.
In doing so, MPL Kama effectively excuses national government from its core safety mandate. The fact that several Western Cape police stations feature in the top 30 murder stations in SAPS annual crime stats year-on-year is evidence of our long standing plea to national government to increase resources at these stations, improve visible policing, and intensify criminal intelligence efforts to fight rampant violent crime.
The lack of SAPS visible policing is a recipe for the encouragement of criminal opportunists. As much as the ANC leadership in the province attempts to blame DA-led governments for this, it is the Western Cape Government and the City of Cape Town which have taken a seat at the table to drastically reduce crime. A clear example: following the recent spate of shootings in Mitchells Plain, the Department of Community Safety (DOCS) provided for the deployment of additional law enforcement officers (LEO) in less than two weeks and on a permanent basis as part of the province’s safety plan.
This year, the DOCS will extend the deployment of LEOs to four additional crime priority areas. In essence, DOCS in co-operation with the City, will be adding more boots on the ground at every top murder station in the province – another example of subnational governments in the province taking a lead on safety, despite it not being their core mandate.
And so, the provincial government has used its budget to supplement the shorting comings of SAPS. Altogether these interventions have led to multiple arrests too, but with constraints in the criminal justice system due to thousands of backlogged DNA specimens at SAPS forensics laboratory, criminal convictions remain in a state of disarray.
Again, this matter is the sole mandate of national government. Worse still, the police minister has stated he was unaware they had been unable to process DNA for the last two months, while the backlog already stands at 172 000. In addition to the backlog, 8 million pieces of evidence were lost due to non-payment of the ICT system used to record and track DNA samples from criminal suspects. Why is the ANC in the province quiet on this crucial issue?
The Community Safety MEC has raised the matter with the minister of police on several occasions, and the Western Cape Police Ombudsman has investigated the matter and made recommendations accordingly. It cannot be that the Minister Cele is simply unaware.
MPL Kama makes one valid point but his argument is skewed: yes, gang violence contributes extensively to the murder rate in Cape Town but as indicated, there is a missing link between the deployment of more police officers and a critically low detective base, despite the evidently high murder rate in the province according to crime stats. Added to this, given the DNA-dilemma, it is no wonder that the gang conviction rate is as low as 3%
Instead of working with the provincial and City governments, national police delayed the deployment of additional LEOs by sitting on the sign-off of appointment certificates.
This is a further instance of what is absent in the state of policing in the province: addressing inefficacies by the lead police agency – (mis)managed by Minister Cele. Misconstruing facts, as attempted by the ANC in the Western Cape, underestimates the crisis we have with SAPS inadequacies and diverts attention away from the responsible authority. Nevertheless, the City and the Province continue to offer hope by taking bold steps to fill these gaps left behind by national government, which must still take its seat at the table if it is serious about keeping residents safe.
* Reagen Allen: DA provincial spokesperson on community safety.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
Cape Argus
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