Picture File: Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele briefing the media. Picture: GCIS
The Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele has admitted that government has failed to deal with the scourge of crime in South Africa.
Briefing the media on Thursday morning in Cape Town, on the outcomes of Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, Gungubele said President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration was working to strengthen the capacity of the South African Police Service (Saps) to fight and prevent crime.
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The minister said this included putting more police on the streets and setting up specialised teams that would focus on specific types of crimes.
“South Africa will also use data-driven methods in more sophisticated ways to identify and target crime hotspots,” said Gungubele.
Cabinet’s response to the country’s high crime rate comes at the back of the increase in gun violence and mass shootings in recent months in the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Eastern Cape.
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The murder of rapper Kiernan Forbes, popularly known as AKA, and his long-time friend Tebello “Tibz” Motsoane – who were shot dead last Friday outside a restaurant on Florida Road in Durban – sent shockwaves across the country, highlighting South Africa’s crime scourge.
Gungubele said Cabinet expressed its condolences to the Forbes and Motsoane families as well as to the families and friends of those killed in recent mass shootings.
“These heinous and coldblooded attacks, which are being investigated by law enforcement authorities, highlight the prevalence of gun violence and its impact in the communities,” he said.
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Gungubele said the Saps was intensifying operations to detect and remove illegal firearms and ammunition from the hands of criminals.
He said in the past 12 months, police had permanently removed 65 519 illegal firearms from circulation.
Despite this, the minister said Cabinet acknowledged that more still needed to be done to tackle SA’s high crime levels.
“We accept that we are failing on crime,” said Gungubele.
He said since Ramaphosa took over the helms at the Unions Buildings in 2018, he had reinforced the capacity of law enforcement agencies to fight crime and corruption.
“If you check recently [and] follow the stats, the rates of arrests have increased in South Africa. A lot of kingpins are being taken to jail and we hope that will be sustained and we will find a way around the issue of crime.
“Otherwise, it is disturbing all of us because it’s undermining the socioeconomic environment so that our people have access to work.”
Gungubele added that Cabinet was calling on citizens to work together with police to drive crime out of their communities.
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