Cape Town – Nyanga residents expected to remain the murder capital of the country, says Community Policing Forum chairperson Martin Makhasi.
According to the 2018/19 crime statistics released on Thursday, it is the police station that recorded the highest number of murders in South Africa, followed by Delft and Khayelitsha.
"We expected to still be number one. They need to listen to the community if they want to turn things around," said Makhasi.
"They must get rid of their annual operational performance plan, which they swear by, because it's been proven that they don't have an impact on the community.
"We've said that they must be proactive. They must ensure that there is visible policing and be preventing crime.
"The problem is they are reacting. In 1996 we had the national crime-prevention strategy, which was very clear as it spoke about proactive policing. What has happened to it?
"In a community like Nyanga you don't come after the fact and say you have a 72-hour activation operation. That's being reactive, people have died. We have to find ways to prevent the loss of life.
"There are currently 349 policemen in Nyanga and there are 200 000 people living there, but the police will give you a lesser number. They are depending on the stats of 2011.
"We weren't expecting the army to have an impact. The army is only there to assist the police and normalise the community. But the actual day-to-day policing still needs to be done by the South African Police Service.
"What we need to do is to look at the entire criminal justice system, because it's not just the police that are failing the people.
"The army is only deployed for three months and it would be absurd for us to expect them to perform miracles.
"There was a case at the Equality Court where we said to the SAPS we believe strongly that stations like Nyanga and neighbouring stations are not resourced properly.
"So we need to be paying attention to how do we resource those stations and also begin to ask what are the other departments doing in terms of assisting the community and police in fighting crime.
"Nothing has happened after the crime summit (held in July). We went there, we ate food, we complained, but then it went back to business as usual.
A total of 289 murder cases were reported in Nyanga, compared to 308 the previous year. Delft reported an increase with 247 cases from 195 last year and Khayelitsha 221 murder cases, which is up from 192.
Mitchells Plain saw a decrease in contact crimes from 4 362 in 2017/2018 to 4 302, followed by Nyanga from 4 784 to 4 260 and Khayelitsha from 3 477 to 3 522.
Delft police station was in sixth position, going down from 3 491 recorded contact crimes to 3 181.
Cape Times
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