Could alcohol be fuelling Tembisa’s crime problem?

The Tembisa police station in Ekurhuleni was under the watchful eye of a parliamentary portfolio committee on police as the area has nearly 200 taverns – and with more than 400 illegal shebeens which were closed, the area – and the police – may have an alcohol-fuelled crime problem on its hands.

The committee concluded a two-day oversight visit to Gauteng on Saturday to assess the fight
against crime but what raised the alarm was the number of liquor outlets in the area.

Tembisa has 189 legal taverns, eight off-site liquor outlets and between April and December last
year, 463 illegal shebeens were shut down by the police.

“The committee has urged the Gauteng Liquor Board to review its processes for issuing licences for taverns and shebeens primarily because substance abuse is one of the causal factors to the high crime rate in the area,” said committee chair Tina Joemat-Pettersson yesterday.

“The committee said the contribution of the provincial stakeholders such as the community policing forums, metro police, the department of social development and the South African Police Service is necessary to deal with the challenge of substance abuse.”

Tembisa has, in the third quarter of the police crime statistics, featured in the top 30 list for various crimes. It was ranked fourth for the highest reported cases of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

While these reports dropped by 75 cases compared to the same period the previous year, Tembisa police station reported 150 cases in the third quarter. Tembisa South police station was ranked 15th for the same crimes.

Tembisa came fifth for the highest cases of attempted murder as well as assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm.

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With murder cases constantly on the rise, Tembisa again fell under this category, taking 22nd place as it had reported 38 murders in the third quarter due to an increase of 20 reported murder cases.

The area further ranked sixth for contact crimes, 16th for contact related crimes, 17th for community-reported serious crimes and 22nd for common assault.

The police station was ranked 14th in the country for cases of malicious damage to property.

Gauteng Liquor Board chief executive Raymond Martin said the process of issuing liquor licences,

includes taking into account the number issued per area.

“When a person qualifies and has… what is called local authority approval, which the municipality issues, and the person meets the requirements, then we issue [the liquor] licence,” said Martin.

“But the board does consider, at some point, similar licences in an area – whether there is a certain amount of licences in the area. Those are the conditions that the board would look at before it issues a licence.”

He said the liquor board was willing to engage with the portfolio committee but so far, they have
not had any interactions related to issues raised in Tembisa.

“We have not heard any interactions with the portfolio committee at this point. Maybe they will and hopefully when they do, we will engage with them on what they present to us,” Martin said.