Issued by: Ministry for Safety and Security
11 June 1997
I am very pleased to have the opportunity to meet with the media regarding the visit of the honourable Minister of the Interior from Mozambique, Mr Almerino Manhenje.
The importance of South Africa's relationship with Mozambique cannot be overemphasised. In years past, this relationship was one of South African intimidation and violence against its neighbour. In the face of this punishing treatment, Mozambique was steadfast in its support for the liberation of South Africa. We remain grateful for this support.
The South African government has sought to shift its relationship with Mozambique from confrontation to cooperation. This cooperation is particularly important in the area of policing and security.
The very nature of the threat has changed. In the past, the world feared wars, and this fear was realised with the outbreak of devastating world wars during this century. Today the world fears rampant criminality, and criminal organisations treat regions of the world as theatres for their operations. Our region is certainly no exception. Just as organised crime syndicates in other parts of the world threaten whole continents and not just individual countries, so these organisations also pose a threat to our collective safety and security.
Criminal organisations come from various countries on this continent, and from as far as Asia and Europe. The fact that cars stolen in South Africa end up throughout the continent is proof that these organisations do not respect national borders.
The best way to tackle this problem is to ensure that we coordinate our activities on a bilateral and multilateral level. We have built our cooperation through two channels - multilateral and bilateral. the multilateral cooperation occurs through organisations such as the Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Organisation and the emerging Southern African Development Community Organ on Politics and Security.
At a bilateral level, we are cooperating on a range of short-term and longer-term security measures that will play a critical role in reducing crime levels in both our countries.
In the very immediate term, we are working together on major operations focused on illegal weapons and on vehicle crime. These two areas of criminal activity share a common evil: they are heavily influenced by criminal organisations that have no regard for national borders.
For this reason, we are working together with the Mozambican authorities to mount effective joint operations.
For example, in just one operation in January of this year, a joint operation of the South African Police Service and Mozambican Police found and destroyed a major arms cache near Xai-Xai. In this cache were weapons including nearly 100 hand grenades, 40 mortars, more than 100 AK-type rifles, more than 100 machine guns and more than 2000 rounds of ammunition.
This follows up on Operations Rachel I and II in 1995, in which more than 1,300 illegal weapons were recovered - more than half of them AK-47s.
One shudders to think what the consequences might have been if these weapons had made their way across the border and into the seal of illegal weapons that is contributing to South Africa's crime problem - as well as afflicting Mozambique's own cities and towns.
In the area of vehicle crime, Operation V-4 has achieved significant success in attacking the illegal smuggling of hijacked and stolen vehicles from South Africa to neighbouring states.
In January, a combined operation including South African, Mozambican and Zimbabwean police recovered 93 vehicles in Zimbabwe and in the following days moved into Mozambique. There they recovered a total of 288 vehicles worth an estimated R33 million. I should add that this operation went on to recover another 997 stolen cars in South africa as well as 187 more in Zambia in April This operation has been an excellent example of the kind of cross-border cooperation we must achieve in order to deal with the increasingly sophisticated cross-border criminal organisations that threaten us.
Joint operations are not the only way to address this problem. We also need to make sure we are sharing our meagre resources efficiently in the fight against crime - and therefore we are also focusing substantial energy on crime prevention initiatives. The goal is to make sure that we not only react after crimes have occurred, but take steps to stop them from occurring in the first place.
The South African National Crime Prevention Strategy, which was approved by Cabinet in May last year, places great emphasis on measures to prevent cross-border crime from taking place. One of the first major NCPS initiatives to be enacted is the border control project. This programme is reducing the number of ports open to bulk commercial traffic from 95 to 34, and is putting in place tough new standards and procedures to improve performance in controlling our borders. Substantial work to upgrade the Komatipoort border post is under way.
Another NCPS project is to address the security issues in major development projects - and in particular the Maputo Corridor and the Lubombo Initiative from northern KwaZulu Natal into southern Mozambique. This vast investment in transport, communication and industrial growth in the corridor linking Maputo to Gauteng will address the crime problem in two ways. First, it will create jobs and foster growth on both sides of the border, thus relieving the pressures of poverty that have encouraged criminal activity. Secondly, it calls for a more professional and integrated approach to the flow of people and goods through the border, so it fits in with the border control initiative of the NCPS.
A team is currently assessing security issues that could arise as a result of the Maputo Corridor and Lubombo projects, including matters such as the planning of service delivery by the criminal justice system as a result of expected economic and population developments in these corridors.
It is clear, then, that the visit of Minister Manhenje allows us to strengthen the existing bonds on both short-term operations and longer-term crime prevention initiatives.
We recognise that the operations we have mounted have been heavily dependent on effective crime intelligence, and we are taking steps to improve the coordination of our crime intelligence.
We also recognise that our basic detective skills and methods need to be enhanced, including our forensic and investigative capacity. South Africa is establishing a detective academy, and is negotiating with foreign police forces and governments to ensure experts are sent to lecture and demonstrate the latest techniques and principles. We have agreed with our Mozambican counterparts to give access to the courses for their police officials. In particular we will make available "train-the-trainer" courses. This will assist both the South African Police Service and the Mozambican police to stay abreast of world-class detective methods.
In addition, substantial training of border control officials from both South Africa and Mozambique is in preparation with international assistance to support the improvement of border control. This cooperation can only serve to ensure that our respective governments ultimately win the war against crime.
(Inquiries to Thembi Mboisa, 012-339-2500)