Durban - Pressure is mounting on President Cyril Ramaphosa to sack his minister of police, Bheki Cele, with the DA expressing shock at the president’s declaration of “complete trust” in Cele, who the party labels a failure.
In yet another in a series of calls for Ramaphosa to sack Cele, DA MP Solly Malatsi said he felt perplexed by Ramaphosa’s continued faith in him.
He claimed that Cele had conceded defeat in the battle against criminal elements who terrorise people on a daily basis.
Malatsi said the party would be holding a mass march on September 6 at the police headquarters in Pretoria to demand his resignation.
Malatsi accused Ramaphosa of siding with an “obstinate” minister over millions of women, who live with the real threat of getting raped daily.
“The DA rejects Ramaphosa’s continued backing of Cele in the face of an out-of-control crime crisis, desperately under-resourced SAPS, and Cele’s personal outbursts that characterise him as grossly incompatible with the high office he holds,” Malatsi said.
“Already hundreds of thousands of South Africans have signed recent petitions calling on the president to fire Cele, and the DA's petition alone has more than 33 000 signatures.
“There is a ‘whole-of-society’ movement building for Bheki Cele to be fired, and by backing Cele, the president has now drawn a line in the sand for the DA, upon which we will act,” Malatsi added.
During Tuesday’s question-and-answer session in the National Assembly, Ramaphosa jumped to Cele’s defence, saying he had complete faith in him, despite the police minister’s failure to rein in criminal elements in the country, according to the DA.
This came after DA leader John Steenhuisen referred to a spate of gang rape incidents earlier this month, and where Cele referred to one 19-year-old rape victim as being lucky to have been raped just once.
Steenhuisen said Cele’s comment showed that he had given up and lost faith in his own ability to keep South Africans safe from rape, murder and other violent crimes.
He said the recent crime statistics showed that South Africans were being murdered each day; 153 people are raped daily, while 364 violent robberies happened daily.
“South Africans are under daily attack from violent criminals in their homes, in their workplaces, and on the streets and your police minister, by his own admission, has given up trying to protect them,” Steenhuisen said.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE