Durban - President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday visited the country's worst police station with regards to reported sexual offence cases.
The president is in Durban to launch his new District Development Model, which would see all government structures pulling together over the issue of service delivery.
With 330 sexual offences reported in 2018/2019, Inanda has been identified as the country’s worst area in terms of sexual offences. It is believed to be fourth when it comes to murder offences.
Before he addressed a mass meeting at Princess Magogo Stadium in KwaMashu, Ramaphosa met with Police Minister Bheki Cele and KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala to have an hour-long meeting with the station management.
KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Brigadier Jay Naicker told Independent Media that since the release of the crime states, a lot has been done to deal with rapes in the areas.
“In terms of the gender-based violence, this is one of the highest in the country and a lot of awareness in taking place because most of these crimes occur behind closed doors,” said Naicker.
He said among strategies to deal with crime was to crack down on “illegal or legal” sale of alcohol.
“As we counted there was 120 legal liquor outlets here. The fact that there are thriving it means there is a lot of alcohol abuse.
“The fact that illegal outlets are thriving it also means that there are problems,” he said.
He said such businesses were being closed down “but after a few days they open up again”.
He said there was big operations to deal with high rate of murder.
“A lot of operations is being done between Thursdays and Sundays because you will find that between Thursday night and Monday morning that is when most of these murders are taking place,” he said.
He said police were focusing on recovering illegal firearms and knives.
“This one of our focus stations, so there is constant people from our management intervention, from national, provincial and even cluster that are conducting inspections here to ensure that checks and balances are in place,” he said.
Naicker said Ramaphosa’s visit would clarify how the police station would benefit from the District Development Model.
“The president now does not want government departments working in silos. We should be working together.
“So all the departments within the district should be working together in crime fighting because a lot of our problems that we experience are due to environmental design with the mushrooming informal settlements,” said Naicker.
He said other departments were expected to assist the police by making sure that street lights were functional and that there are access roads.
“Service delivery is important because a lot of our police are taken away from fighting crime to attend to service delivery protests,” he said.