Leadership

The MEC for Department of Safety and Security in Mpumalanga Mr Fish Mahlalela, vows to root out crime in the Province. He also says that criminals are a minority and they are not supposed to subject citizens to fear. He is encouraging communities to bring the might of collectivism to fight and defeat crime. “United is our Resolve”.

It is equally our collective responsibility to assist young people in order to ensure that things do not fall apart. Those of us who are law abiding citizens need to ask ourselves, what must we do to turn everybody who does not uphold the law to become a law abiding citizens like us? In order to deal with these challenges faced by our people in general and the youth in particular. President Thabo Mbeki during the 4th Nelson Mandela lecture in July 2006 said; “we must place at the centre of our daily activities the pursuit of the goals of social cohesion and human solidarity. We must therefore strive to integrate into the national consciousness the value system in the world outlook described as ubuntu. We must therefore constantly ask ourselves the question – what is it in our country that militates against social cohesion and human solidarity?”

This is a belief which I also cherish and very much convinced that working together with the masses of our province, a dream of creating a province that is free from fear of any form of criminality will be born.

We further hold the view that safety and security requires a broad and integrated approach which is derived from the principle of co-operative governance and intergovernmental relations as embedded in the constitution of the Republic of South Africa, which clearly states that all spheres of government and all organs of state within each spheres must preserve peace, national unity and indivisibility of the Republic.

We know where we are coming from, a history where an emphasis was placed on the security concerns of the state as opposed to a wider notion which emphasise the security of the people. Therefore, our task is to educate communities to understand and accept that the SAPS is their police and is there to serve them.

As part of our strategy to build capacity in police stations and to transform the SAPS, We have begun with the restructuring process, redeployment of senior police officers to be in charge of police stations, through affirmative action, deployed female officers who are also doing a remarkable work.

The Community Policing Forum since their establishment almost ten years ago, have not been successful to massively mobilise our society in a united front against crime. This inability by our CPFs to root police amongst the community is due to the structural arrangement of the current CPFs.

It is in this context that we are revamping the working of these structures so that they are able to effectively perform their task of properly co-ordinating the relationship between the communities and the police. We are finalising, together with them, under the leadership of their Provincial Chairperson.

As a result of this weakness, we are now coming up with a new arrangement which will allow CPF’s to act as facilitators between the community and the police. This approach will require CPFs to act on behalf of communities, facilitate discussion with the police, the policing priorities of that community and put together a policing master plan that will be collectively owned by communities and police. The station commissioners will be required to, at least once per quarter go back to the communities and report on the crime trends in their areas and to what extent they are succeeding to deal with crime. The communities will therefore be given an opportunity through this process to assess police performance based on the policing priorities and targets that were set in the master plan which has been agreed upon between the community and the station commissioner. This will also strengthen the accountability of the police to the community they serve.

Since all of us have now recognised that the police service and government cannot fight crime alone, we therefore call upon stakeholders of our society such as religious faith based organisations, youth and women movement, business and labour as well as the Moral Regeneration Movement, to mention but a few, to join hands in our struggle to mobilise all sectors of our population in the fight against crime and reclaim our streets, liberate our towns and villages from any form of criminality. Our message “Together let’s fight Crime” must live to its objective and meaning.

To give life to this theme, we will effectively deal with the challenges posed by contact crime, we would, through izimbizo, mobilise our communities to give information to the police on criminal activities in order to close the space for criminals. We will not allow criminals to claim the freedom of this country, subjecting the good citizens of this country to fear. We will mobilize the masses to combat crime and encourage people to bring the might of collectivism to defeat crime.

As we prepare for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, we are charged with the enormous task of creating conditions that are conducive for the safety of the people of this province and visitors. We had consulted with other government departments, law enforcement agencies, our role players and stakeholders, we have been able to come up with the draft 2010 Safety Plan which we hope to drive and popularize among the people of the province and visitors as a plan that would guarantee their safety now, during the World Cup and beyond.

Leadership Magazine July 2007