/ 12 November 2008

Minister: We are living in a ‘killing field’

The new ”get tough” approach to fighting crime signalled by the post-Polokwane leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) was elaborated on on Wednesday by Nathi Mthethwa, the new Minister of Safety and Security, who told Parliament’s select committee on security and constitutional affairs that the South African Police Service (SAPS) should be able to ”fight fire with fire”.

”When you are faced, as the SAPS is on a daily basis, with criminals armed with sophisticated weaponry,” the minister said, ”its task should not be to take out and flesh out human rights. We are in a killing field.”

He told members of the committee: ”We have an obligation to strengthen the arm of task forces, to be able to teach those people a lesson. Fight fire with fire.”

He said that one of the reasons for a reduction in the number of cash-in-transit heists recently has been ”this strong-arm tactic, which has been employed.”

He said he should ”capacitate” these units if there is to be any significant breakthrough in the fight against crime.

Enhancing the capacity of such taskforces was one of three measures the minister proposed to stiffen the anti-crime forces. The other two were to greatly improve the gathering and analysis of crime intelligence, and to improve partnerships against crime with communities, with business, and especially now with the private security industry.

A pilot project on cooperation between the police and private security guards will be launched on Friday at Honeydew, outside Johannesburg. He pointed out that the ratio of police to population in this country is very low — one to 347.

The security company personnel will, for instance, be trained in how to maintain the integrity of crime scenes. They can also be the eyes and ears of the police, he said.

”We are not naïve about this,” he said. ”Some of the people in the private security companies need a thorough security check and screening — We won’t have people with criminal records in partnership with ourselves.”

Mthethwa told MPs that the police themselves also need to be crime free. He commended Northern Cape authorities, who arrested 24 people involved in illicit diamond dealing last week, including six serving police officers.

The minister also hinted that he would be removing suspended police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi from his post.

He said he would be dealing with the problems caused by having an acting head of criminal intelligence, ”which is not a desirable situation”, and an acting national commissioner, ”which also is not a desirable situation”.

”We are moving insofar as that is concerned,” he said. — I-Net Bridge