KANYAMAZANE – The police in this township have come under fire by local residents This time around politicians are accusing them of failing to prevent the bloody battle that ensued on Sunday between supporters of the ANC and the SACP.
This comes barely a week after the community of Tekwane South accused police of reluctance to arrest known criminals who had commited crimes in the area, including a burglary at the home of Miss Mpumalanga, Natasha dos Santos recently.
Local politicians, who attended the Joe Slovo and Jimmy Mohlala memorial lecture at the community hall on Sunday, accused the local police of negligence.
”The police are not taking their job seriously. We alerted them in advance of the situation, but they didn’t respond. It doesn’t take them even five minutes to get to the community hall. They only arrived when things were already out of control.
“The question is: are we really safe in this country when our police officers fail to intervene in time? People had already been injured when they finally arrived. This is totally unacceptable,” said a politician who refused to be identified.
Speaking to this publication, the spokesperson for the local police, WO Andries Sikwambane denied that the police didn’t take the matter seriously.
”It’s not true that we failed to respond on time. What happened here is that they called us when there was already a crisis. When we arrived, we had already requested back-up from neighbouring police stations to control the situation.
“Normally if there’s an event to be held, we are informed by the organisers prior to the event. It is then we deploy officers to that particular venue to monitor proceedings.
In this case, we were never informed, only when there was already trouble. We did however manage to quell the situation.
“On the issue of Tekwane South, we are doing our best to fight crime. We have noticed that burglaries are still a problem in the area, but we have the assistance of the local Community Policing Forum in the matter.
“We will be reviving sector policing because it’s going to play a significant role in beefing up the level of police visibility,“ he concluded.
Speaking to this publication the secretary of the SACP in Phillip Hadebe district who hosted the gathering.
Mr Borbert Nkosi, said,
“We informed police early about the event before it took place on Sunday because we suspected trouble. On Friday when we were summoned by the ANC’s Regional Executive Committee and told they were comfortable with Dr Mathews Phosa addressing the memorial lecture. We held a meeting with the police and requested them to monitor the situation, but they didn’t come.
“When things were getting out of hand, we also informed them and they took an hour to arrive. They were just standing and watching the situation. I don’t know what the criteria that they were using was as they parked outside and watched proceedings from their vehicles. “Three police officers were just walking around, left and came back again. They kept on doing the same thing while people were fighting,” he further stated.
Nkosi told Mpumalanga News that the whole drama started when they were told on Friday by the REC that the ANC was not comfortable with the two guest speakers who were going to deliver keynote addresses at the memorial lecture, namely Dr Mathews Phosa and Mr Bonakele Majuba because they were anti-DD (premier David Mabuza).
He said the SACP was warned about this chaos as Nkosi stated the chaos did not come to him as a surprise as they were told by the REC that ANC members were not going to be part of the gathering.
This publication tried to contact the ANC’s regional secretary of Ehlanzeni Mr Phazamisa Mathe to get his side of the story but our efford was fruitless as he said he was engaged in a meeting .
