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It is now clear that the fight against crime is not being won. The high rate of police killings indicates how comfortable criminals are. When people cross the border illegally they are breaking the law, when they grab land and settle illegally, breaking the law again and when they mine illegally they are still breaking the law. They use unlicensed firearms and sometimes heavy calibre weapons (breaking the law). They commit murder (still breaking the law). Today, in a free South Africa, communities live under siege. You cannot even jog on the street without fear of being attacked. This is the state of our nation.

Our wealth is being stolen daily. The kingpins are never mentioned. They are in drug trafficking, illegal mining, human trafficking, contraband, scrap metals, etc. This country is being stripped bare while everyone is just watching, wining, and dining.

The debt to GDP ratio is ever increasing and the West is giving SA more loans to make the burden even heavier. With only 1% growth in GDP there is no hope in hell that this country will ever come out of its unemployment and poverty trap. We need at least 6% growth to start realizing some movement in employment figures. This will need the SAPS to change their current crime fighting strategy to mitigate the violent society we are serving.

In these circumstances, opening free borders and allowing hordes of unskilled and unemployed hungry people will only add to crime and social ills. No country in the whole world allows this kind of thing. Even USA, with its trillions of dollars, prevents hordes of hungry South Americans from entering its borders freely.

South Africa, which lives on borrowed money, thinks it can provide services to the rest of the world. The citizens and taxpayers have never been asked or consulted about how their hard-earned money should be used. Meantime, government services are deteriorating, and criminal syndicates are taking over because the state institutions have been weakened and do not appear to have the capacity to respond to anything meaningfully, even natural disasters.

The state has a constitutional obligation to protect the country, its citizens, its national assets, and natural resources. It is the only institution with the authority (surrendered to it by citizens) to monopolies organized violence in the form of instruments of law enforcement. Failing this, organized crime syndicates and individuals will arrogate unto themselves the unlawful right to use instruments of organized violence which should be the sole prerogative of the state. In these circumstances, we will recede into anarchy, which is where we already are.

We have a problem of performance and accountability, no urgency, no change in thinking, dabbling in mundane tasks and conducting strategic planning workshops, developing mid- term, annual, and audit plans in an organization which is about to be liquidated. Nobody sees and understands the nature of the crisis. It means different things to different people. Those benefiting from it, do not see and those affected by it, demand urgent action.

we need to create an awareness amongst our societies, that the war against crime won’t be won until we play our meaningful role in holding those who are responsible for our safety and security accountable. But also demand urgent action from government to get all departments which are responsible for human settlement, home affairs, social development, mineral and energy, public works, defence and many other interested parties, to help deal with illegal grabbing of the land, illegal mining, illegal crossing of the borders, etc.

SAPS can arrest as many people as possible of foreign nationals and put them in a first train out of this country, but tomorrow morning, they are all back because of our porous borders.

IPUSA believe that the proper mobilization of all departments and the community involvement in the fight against crime, is the only way to helping SAPS to win the fight against crime. but as things stands now, the contract between the state and its citizens is in trouble.

Issued by IPUSA