Operation Okae Molau ‘Basadi’ continued on 20 August with various roadblocks placed around the Honeydew policing area.
As August is Women’s Month, Okae Molau ‘Basadi’ is a female-led operation with a majority of female officers engaging in stop-and-searches of vehicles to find illegal weapons, drugs, stolen items and stolen vehicles.
Members of the Johannesburg West and North Cluster Police were joined by the Gauteng Traffic Police, the Metro police and the South African Defence Force to help with the stopping of vehicles so that they could be thoroughly searched. Major General Anna Mateisi commanded the operation and briefed the police parade of more than 150 officers at Northgate Shopping Centre before engaging with the plans for the day.
“All of our operations for August will highlight the strength of women in our force with operation Basadi, and we value the support of our male colleagues who will be supporting us,” she said. From the beginning of the month, the police started this operation in Soweto and then moved to various crime hotspots in the Johannesburg region.
“Today, we focused on Cosmo City and Zandspruit heading out in groups to set up roadblocks. These groups are also being headed by senior female brigadiers,” she continued.
Mateisi added that the operation took place in four phases, starting with a crime intelligence operation in the area during the night of 19 August.
“Our officers focused on information provided to them to raid homes where they knew drugs were being sold and purchased. The operation was very successful, and we arrested three suspects for possession and dealing drugs.” The next phase involved detective-tracing operations to arrest suspects for gender-based violence crimes.
“For the entire district, we had 242 arrests thanks to these tracing operations.”
The last two phases were the stop-and-search operations held on the morning of 20 August.
