Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

Sheepish senior police officers are working on an ambitious plan to reduce the incidence of crime in KwaZulu-Natal.

In hastily arranged meetings, senior SAPS organisers have met with the SANDF and with representatives of metro police forces in the province to discuss plans to eradicate crime.

This follows the release of recent crime statistics by Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula which painted grim picture of the crime rate in the province.

From April 2006 to March this year, almost 5 000 murders were committed in the province. Gauteng and the Eastern Cape reported fewer than 4 000 murders each.

A senior police officer told the Daily News yesterday: “The competition is on among provinces to have as few crime incidents as possible when the statistics are released. We were very embarrassed with the recent crime statistics,” said the source.

This was confirmed by the provincial police head Hamilton Ngidi, who said the plan was in place to intensify efforts to eradicate crime in the province.

“The competition is now on among provinces because everyone wants to bring in good results urgently. We want to reduce crime drastically,” Ngidi said.

Ngidi, however, refused to divulge the strategies they would use to fight crime, saying that it would alert criminals.

“We have recently managed to reduce the number of ATM bombings because we used a certain strategy. I would be alerting criminals if I were to tell you how we have done it,” he said.

What worries KZN residents is that the new statistics show that almost 80% of hijackings and 80% of robberies at homes and business premises were occurring in KZN and Gauteng.

Although the police boss refused to divulge the actual strategies which will be used, the Daily News has been told that the focus will be on reducing what is called contact crimes. This includes crimes such as organised crime, armed robberies, cash-in-transit heists and criminal acts against women and children.

This will be done by pursuing the most wanted criminals in the province who are believed to be ringleaders of the high spate of armed robberies.

The strategy adopts the target set by the national cabinet to reduce serious and violent crimes by between 7% and 10% annually over an eight-year period, ending in 2014.

One sign of this crackdown on crime syndicates may be the arrest this weekend of a suspected criminal, described as the most wanted armed robber.

He was wanted for a string of armed robberies amounting to millions of rands in the greater Durban area.

His arrest follows the capture of four of his co-accused early last week. They will all appear in court this week.

Durban Metro Police spokesman Thomas Tyala said they had been asked to help reduce armed robberies by holding roadblocks and also identifying suspected criminals in the taverns and nightclubs.

To deal with what many see as out of control crime in the country, the central government will, during the 2007/8 financial year, spend more than R51 billion on the criminal justice system.