What’s to blame for SA’s high crime rate – according to officers in the country’s most violent areas

On Tuesday (30 October), Parliament’s portfolio on police called on the SAPS station commanders from the top five stations in South Africa with the highest incidents of violent crime.

The committee decided that the station commanders of Hillbrow, Johannesburg Central, Kagiso, Mitchells Plain and Nyanga should appear before the committee so that the current SAPS strategy on combatting contact crime could be evaluated.

According to a report by Ground Up, all five had seen an increase in crime, with just minor shifts seen in other categories of contact crime.

It noted that the police blamed foreign nationals, unemployment, and gang activity for being the main impediments to reducing crime in the precincts.

Also of concern was a lack of resources, with a spokesperson for the Nyanga police station arguing that there had been no proper national review by SAPS of the conditions under which people live, and the part this plays in failing to lower crime rates.

Criticism

While these complaints were acknowledged by the MPs, the committee members also condemned the fact that the five precincts have held their positions as the highest violent crime rate precincts for most of recent history.

They noted that in many of these precincts officers failed to report to work, resources had been stolen or misplaced, and that there were a number of allegations of fraud in these precincts.

However Ground Up reports that minister of police, Bheki Cele, laughed at the committee’s criticisms – claiming that the SAPS mission is impossible because ‘the conditions of the precincts will never change’.

“SAPS mandate is overstretched and impossible to fill,” said Sitole.

He added that the true solution was not increased police enforcement, but ‘overall change of human life’.

Read: Johannesburg wants the power to prosecute and imprison criminals directly