LETTER: Replace endless police imbizos with jail time for criminals

In the past few weeks we’ve seen police minister Bheki Cele visit the Cape Flats after a spate of murders in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha. What he fails to tell us is how many convictions there were since his last visit, because until there are convictions, all his cheap rhetoric will remain hollow to those of us who live in fear of crime in Khayelitsha.

Cele’s incessant imbizos are a waste of time, especially when you note that the policing budget has been cut while VIP protection has increased, so that he and his comrades in corruption can continue to live lavish lifestyles in their gated mansions.

Talk is cheap and meaningless. Cele must wake up and do the following:

• Stop the defunding of the police and bring police deployment up to international best practice levels, especially in crime hotspots;
• Urgently employ more detectives and properly resource them, as no detective can handle a caseload of more than 200 — that is simply denying justice to the victims’ families; and
• Bring back the specialised units and equip them with specialised detectives and prosecutors — organised crime needs a specialised police response.

Meanwhile, let the City of Cape Town build its capacity in parallel to that of the SAPS so that it can do what it knows should be done to give citizens relief from crime and violence. The contribution being made by the city’s Law Enforcement Advancement Plan project is proving to be very valuable as it is taking 20-30 guns off the street monthly across the city.

The murder rate in Cape Town’s Nyanga, Khayelitsha, Kraaifontein and Harare has been reduced through this project, which proves that the governments of the Western Cape and Cape Town are doing their best to shield residents from violent crime, gangsterism and the failures of Cele’s leadership as he keeps cutting the police budget.

Thanks to all the metro police officers who step out daily to make our communities safe.

Enough is enough, Cele must go.

Thulani Dasa
Khayelitsha

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.