Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

President Thabo Mbeki says crimes against women and children will continue to receive priority attention, including the establishment of sexual offences courts.

Delivering his State of the Nation Address in Parliament today, the President said 11 such courts had already been launched in the past six months.

On other crime-related issues, Mr Mbeki said the country's security agencies had been hard at work over the last three years to implement the National Crime Combating Strategy targeted at policing areas with the highest incidence of serious crimes.

However, he said government was confident that definite progress was being made in combating crime.

President Mbeki said since 1999, the rates of serious crimes in targeted areas had either been reduced or stabilised. Murder was reduced by almost 17 percent.

Better intelligence capacity and improved operations had also improved the prevention and combating of crimes such as bank robberies, cash-in-transit heists and car hijackings.

'Case backlogs and the number of awaiting trial prisoners have been reduced as a result of the implementation of Saturday courts and improvement in the integrated justice system.

'We will continue to improve the capacity of the police service to discharge its crime prevention and combating responsibilities in these priority areas.'

He added measures would also be taken to ensure that the structures meant to support the security agencies, such as the SANDF Commandos and police reservists were properly regulated to do what they were set up for.

President Mbeki also commended the country's security agencies for the sterling work done during the launch of the African Union (AU) and during the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) last year.

During both events, security agencies were successful in providing security for foreign international delegates and no incidence of violence was reported.