Mavimbela of Diepsloot Police Station now a top cop

The voice of Diepsloot Police Station will come to an abrupt silence at the end of August.

The same voice will, however, be heard in Pretoria issuing Saps press statements and granting interviews – but with a higher rank.

Diepsloot Police Station communication officer, formerly Warrant Officer, Daniel Mavimbela has been promoted to Captain and is a principal communication officer in the force. His promotion will see him moving to Sunnyside Police Station.

Although Mavimbela is very excited about his promotion, he is also sad to leave the Diepsloot community he has been part of since 2011.

“I came to Diepsloot in 2011 from Attridgeville Police Station in Pretoria and managed to fit into the community well. So making this decision to leave Diepsloot Police Station was not easy,” said the soft-spoken captain.

He explained that he came to Diepsloot six years ago in search of challenges after working as both section manager and coordinator at Attridgeville Police Station.

And challenges he got. Diepsloot was in the early stages of becoming a formal township, and when the energetic cop crossed its dusty streets, violent crime was rampant as the populous township was dark and inaccessible. “By then, Diepsloot was known to be problematic and my first task was to deal with social crime prevention, which involves investigating the root causes of crime and coming up with mechanisms to counter it.”

Mavimbela added that his responsibilities included teaching the community to shun crime. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the first Community Policing Forum (CPF). “I also had the responsibility of developing a working relationship with different stakeholders in the community, like civic societies, non-governmental organisations and government departments.”

The captain’s face lit up as he spoke about the Memeza (‘Shout’) project which he successfully implemented in Diepsloot. The project involved the installation of small alarms in homes with the capacity to alert the police mobile vans whenever a home was invaded. He added that the device had the capacity to emit a noisy alarm when someone was under attack.

The Memeza project led to a drop in the crime rate in the township. “Murder dropped by nine percent and sexual offences were reduced by 26 percent,” he said proudly.