08 March 2001
Gauteng MEC for Safety and Liaison, Ms Nomvula Mokonyane, today urged members of the Democratic Alliance in the Gauteng Legislature to stop making false statements and threatening government about the release of crime statistics.
"I wish to put it on record that our government is committed to deal with crime effectively and efficient in all corners of this province and the country as a whole. We have identified priority crimes for each of the seven policing areas within the province and we have allocated resources accordingly and will continue doing so until we bring down the levels of crime to tolerable levels, " said MEC.
"The placing of a moratorium on the release of crime statistics was made after careful consideration and analysis of problems experienced by the police. If we are to deal with crime effectively, we have to act responsibly.
The National Minister and Commissioner Selebi ordered that the system of gathering the statistics be reviewed in its entirety in order to optimise operational planning. At this stage we cannot continue to release information that is inaccurate and sometimes misleading not only to the police but also to other government agencies, " Mokonyane added.
To date, over 3 000 members have been trained with regard to the capturing, extraction and analysis of crime information as part of the implementation plan. Standardised crime definitions and counting rules have also been developed.
Two hundred and six additional civilian members have already been employed at key police stations to assist with the capturing of crime data.
Enlistment of a further 300 data typists is receiving attention and this process should be completed by April 2001. Relevant IT systems are in the process of improvement in respect of issues such as down time, user friendliness, integration with other crime related systems, crime codes and geographical reporting blocks.
Additional workstations to the amount of R1, 3 million will be installed during 2001.
The ANC government is committed to the principle of transparency and as soon as all systems have been put in place, statistics will be made available periodically within the confines of the Access to Information Act and the Constitution. The President and the National Minister have made it very clear that this process would be finalised by June 2001. There is no reason to doubt the intention of the government and our President.
In order to deal with crime in areas such as Rietgat, Mamelodi, Sunnyside, Brooklyn, Garsfontein, Lyttleton, Pretoria Central and Wierdabrug, we launched 'Operation Tshwane' during January 2001. A task team consisting of members from various Units was established and its main focus was to focus on Intelligence driven operations as directed by crime patterns and crime threat analysis. Since this operation was launched many successes have been recorded and 31 hijackers and 12 house robbers have been arrested and are behind bars. Through thorough investigation it was also established that some of these suspects were sought by the police for various crimes ranging from murder to possession of unlicensed firearms.
Another success is that between February 01 and February 12 several roadblocks were held and this resulted in the arrest of about 407 people for violent crimes and 804 for minor offences. A number of crime syndicates have been infiltrated and more arrests will happen soon.
Mokonyane went on to refer to the National Crime Prevention Strategy (NCPS p11) document, "there are serious problems with available statistics as an indicator of the crime rate in South Africa. This renders a simple statistical analysis of the crime problem inadequate." Another problem identified by the NCPS is that, " a further problem is the inefficient data-gathering methodology. This is historically rooted in crime data gathering as an administrative rather than an analytical enterprise within the departments of the criminal justice system".
This therefore proves that when our government came into power we realised as early as 1996 that the process of gathering statistics is flawed.
If members of the opposition can refer to the NCPS document which was adopted by Cabinet in May 1996 they will be clarified more about this matter and stop making false statements and threatening to take our National Minister and President to court.
Mokonyane concluded by saying, "I wish to appeal to members of the opposition to once again stop putting pressure to the police to release crime statistics because we are still busy trying to correct a mess that was created by the apartheid government and let us not politicise something that is administrative."
Issued by: Gauteng Department of Safety and Liaison
For more information contact:
Mongezi Mnyani - 082 571 3590
Nomvula Khalo - 083 680 6586