Health
With regard to murders and other violent crimes in the Western Cape police precincts in the top 30 murder stations according to the latest police crime statistics:
- (a) What (i) is the number of murders that have been reported at each of these stations per month from January 2020 to October 2020 and (ii) are the motives for these murders and (b) what are the details of the measures taken by his Department to respond to the murders and other violent crimes in each of these precincts per month for the period January 2020 to October 2020;
- (a) what is the number of murders that have taken place in (i) Mfuleni, (ii) Harare and (iii) Browns Farm in Philippi in (aa) 2018/19, (bb) 2019/20 and (cc) 2020/21 to date and (b) what programmes has his Department put in place to make these areas safe;
- what is the number of law enforcement officers who have been deployed in each of the crime hotspots in the top 30 murder precincts in 2019 in order to prevent crime;
(4) whether his Department has conducted studies into the high number of murders in these police precincts; if not, why not; if so, (a) what are the reasons for the high number of murders and (b) what interventions have been put in place?
The South African Police Services informed me as follows:
6. (1) Refer to response to question 5. (1)
(2) (a) (i) (aa) 2019/2019: 154
(bb) 2019/2020: 165
(cc) April – June 2020: 20
(ii) (aa) 2018/2019: 166
(bb) 2019/2020: 162
(cc) April – June 2020: 35
(iii) (aa) 2018/2019: 85
(bb) 2019/2020: 72
(cc) April – June 2020: 16
Minister of Community Safety
(2) (b) The Provincial Strategic Objective of the Programme: Secretariat for Safety and security is to promote professional policing through effective oversight of the police in partnership with communities and organisations. The idea of oversight is embedded in the ‘Whole-of-Society Approach’ to the notion of increasing safety, which means that a range of stakeholders are involved, not just traditional law-enforcement agencies and agents. This type of oversight involves members of civil society monitoring their environments as well as holding the SAPS accountable.
The following are some of the programmes/interventions that have been put in place:
- The Expanded Partnership Programme (EPP) provides Community Police Forums (CPFs) with the structure to conduct oversight over the local SAPS whilst also allowing the space to form strong partnerships between CPFs, SAPS and the Department of Community Safety. In this way, CPFs and the EPP contributes to making safety everyone’s responsibility and thereby working towards safe and cohesive communities in the Province. The Department provides EPP funding to the CPFs in the mentioned areas and has funded matching grant projects to facilitate their effective functioning and enhance active citizenship. The matching grant system was a co-funding model that was based on past performance of the CPF on the EPP, where the Department funded CPFs to a maximum amount of R10,000.00 per project, based on certain terms and conditions.
- The Department also conducted consultative workshops with the following CPF clusters with the objectives of capacity building and increasing resilience to safety and security challenges:
- Nyanga Cluster (which includes Philippi East),
- Mitchells Plain Cluster (which includes Philippi),
- Bluedowns Cluster (which includes Delft and Mfuleni), and
- Khayelitsha Cluster (which includes Harare, Site B and Site C).
- The Department provides a supporting role to the SAPS with the establishment of CPFs. In this regard, the Department has supported 66 CPFs before the Covid-19 lockdown period by facilitating the AGMs of these CPFs. The SAPS run the process of screening and vetting the elected members. When this is concluded, the Department, in partnership with SAPS, issues AGM certificates. After the certification process the Department invites those CPFs to participate on the EPP, by signing a Transfer Payment Agreement. This strengthens the oversight and partnership roles between the respective CPFs and the local SAPS, towards increased safety in the Province.
- In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Department implemented the Neighbourhood Watch (NHW) Safety Improvement Patrollers with Covid-19 Relief Project. The NHW project was initially planned to focus on regular safety improvement patrolling, however, with COVID-19 challenges, this focus was shifted to COVID-19 relief measures, including promoting civil compliance by encouraging social distancing and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) adherence, towards flattening the COVID-19 pandemic curve in the health hotspot areas which included Harare.
- Furthermore, the Department has partnered with the City of Cape Town to fund the Law Enforcement Advancement Programme (LEAP). The intention of the LEAP is to provide boots on the ground in order to increase safety in high crime areas. The Department funded the recruitment of 500 LEAP Law Enforcement officers and the officers are placed in 5 priority areas identified which included the Philippi policing precinct. The main area in this precinct is Hanover Park based on the number of murders in the area. With the recent spate of murders and gang violence, the Province could immediately with the cooperation of the City of Cape Town and SAPS, deploy a higher number of Law Enforcement officers to the area which had an immediate impact of the number of murders and level of gang activity.
- The department has a long-standing relationship with religious institutions and have partnering with them since 2012 in the Youth Safety and Religious programme (YSRP). Through the partnership with religious institutions the Department managed to keep youth from vulnerable areas off the streets by engaging them in activities during the June and December school holiday period. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the June school holiday programme could not be implemented, however, the Department intends to continue with the YSRP during the December/January school holidays.
(3) Refer to response to question 5. (3)
(4) Refer to response to question 5. (4)
