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2 June 2006

Thank you very much, Chairperson. Good morning to everyone in this House, including my colleagues from the provinces. I have been given what is indicated here as approximately 15 minutes. I will round it off and make it 20 minutes.

I hear the Minister of Correctional Services inviting you, when you have time, to go and visit our correctional facilities in order for you to better understand them. I have not heard him say that in order for you to understand those facilities better; you must actually be locked up because that is how you will build up in experience in the end.

The last time I appeared before this House, I indicated our leadership in the provinces regarding policing and I want to indicate what has happened since. There have been changes in terms of our commissioners, the first one being the fact that provincial commissioner Ernest Nkabinde, who was in Mpumalanga, has since retired and we have put in that province Commissioner Afrika Khumalo. He is the new commissioner for Mpumalanga.

Commissioner McKaiser of the Northern Cape also retired and that is when we got an opportunity to appoint the first female member of South African Police Service (SAPS) to be a provincial commissioner, Commissioner Nosaziso Mbombo is now there.

A change is also in the Eastern Cape where Commissioner Mpongoma has retired and we have shifted Commissioner Landu from the Free State to the Eastern Cape. We are looking for someone to replace him in the Free State.

Our intention is to reduce crime in South Africa on annual basis by between 7% and 10%, particularly with regards to social crimes, as well as contact crimes. Contact crimes are those crimes where individuals are attacked directly. They include murder and rape. In order for us to better do this, there are changes we are bringing about in the Department, among others to reorganise the department so that more and better resources are directed to the provinces.

In that respect we are consolidating the personnel pool, as well as material resources, for our provinces, particularly the local police stations so that they can better discharge their obligations for crime prevention and combating of crime.

During the financial year under review, we have recruited 10 000 entry-level constables. In terms of the provincial spread, we have 6 470, with the Free State getting six percent thereof or 606; the Northern Cape is getting three percent or 338; North West will also get six percent; Limpopo will get eight percent or 791; KwaZulu-Natal 8,5% or 858; Gauteng is getting 10% or 884; Mpumalanga gets seven percent or 744; Western Cape will get eight percent or 778; Eastern Cape will get eight percent or 810 people. Apart from those who have been recruited in terms of the Police Services Act, we have people who come from the Public Service.

They have been engaged in terms of the Public Service Act. The provinces are therefore going to be getting some of these people and in the end, the Free State will get 651 people, including those public service personnel; the Northern Cape will get 352; North West will get 699; Limpopo will get 840; KwaZulu-Natal will get 945; Gauteng will get 1 065; Mpumalanga will get 782; the Western Cape will get 852 and the Eastern Cape will get 875 people. The provinces will therefore get 7 061 people.

Apart from this, of the 2 920 members that we have recruited for the protection and security services, some of them are going to be directed to the provinces. The picture therefore in terms of personnel as at 31 March 2006 looks as follows: the North West has 10 329; the Western Cape has 19 735; Northern Cape has 6 144; Free State has 10 267; the Eastern Cape has 17 785; KwaZulu-Natal has 22 527; Mpumalanga has 9 098; Limpopo has 10 611; Gauteng has 31 996 – and therefore, the total that we have regarding the provinces is 138 492 people.

If you add that to the national total of 170 744, by the end of March 2006, we had in the service, 155 532 members of the SAPS. We are heading by the end of the financial year 2008/09 to 178 910 members of the SAPS.

What we are going to do at station level is that as we dissolve the area offices, we are going to put the various police stations into crime clusters, so that there is more effectiveness in terms of co-ordination and command and control. We want to ensure that we are able to discharge therefore the obligations that we have to reduce crime by between seven and 10% annually.

We will, at the end of the financial year in 2009 do an assessment to check if we have been able to do what we intended to do. Among things that we have done and will continue to do have been to place on our land borders members of the SAPS to replace members from the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) who were doing the work on those borders.

What we are going to be doing during this year under review is that the land borderline control will continue within the six provinces. But the priority for the current financial year is the Lesotho land borderline, which includes KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and the Eastern Cape.

We did indicate that as we phase out the commando system, we are going to replace it with more police officers, as well as people from our special reservist’s lists. An amount of R265 million has been approved for the call up of reservists and will be allocated as follows.

During the current financial year R60 million has been allocated for the call up of 8 000 reservists. The next one, R80 million will be allocated and we will recruit 10 000 reservists. In the last one of the three-year Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) period, R125 million will be allocated for the call up of 15 000 reservists.

Almost 17 000 reservists were recruited during the last financial year and those are in addition to the pool of reservists that we already had as indicated in the last Budget Vote speech. A total of 130 of these reservists will be commando members recruited in respect of our exit-entry strategy between the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and the SAPS.

It is anticipated that the recruitment of former commando members will increase, as the units that are due for closure are comprised of fully active members. In the end, every one of those active commando members, if indeed they satisfy all the conditions that apply to that level of recruitment, shall have been allocated to the various police service units, so that they become part and parcel of our reservists.

The Department of Public Works and the SAPS agreed in February this year to allow the SAPS to manage its maintenance, property rates, municipal services and leaseholds. And, in terms of the agreement, the SAPS will assume responsibility for its own accommodation requirements, starting from 1 April this year.

The new arrangement, of course, will be monitored by an interdepartmental steering committee, involving the Department of Public Works, the National Treasury and the SAPS.

The budget allocation in respect of capital works, maintenance, property rates, municipal services and property leases stands at R1,627 billion. In the last financial year we renovated 14 police stations, while 19 will be renovated during the current period. We built 13 police stations last year, and 25 new ones will be constructed during the current financial year.

In the previous Budget Vote I indicated that both the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) and the Secretariat would be restructured for maximum effectiveness. Work in that direction has already been done. However, attention was focused at national level only as a means to kick-start the process.

The next phase will be the structural review and design of the Secretariat at provincial level, a matter that is receiving attention between the Ministry and the members of the executive council responsible for community safety in the provinces, on one level, and the Department for the Public Service and Administration (DPSA), on the other.

At the last MinMec the matter was discussed and therefore we are looking at ways and means to consolidate that particular front. We are doing this to ensure that the same rules and regulations will be the guiding lights as we finalise the matter.

The management of service delivery complaints has been resolved between the ICD and the Secretariat. The Secretariat, in terms of its mandate, will handle such cases as it enjoys the latitude of monitoring and evaluating the implementation of SAPS policies and policy recommendations on improving service delivery to our communities.

Through the Secretariat filtering mechanisms, those complaints that fall within the mandate of the ICD and any other stakeholders will be channelled. An increase of approximately 17,5% marks the budget allocation this financial year of the ICD. This has enabled the directorate to continue to improve its internal capacity to investigate complaints and to raise the level of its administrative ability to deal with the implementation of obligatory legislation and to strengthen corporative governance.

The ICD is an independent mechanism that was established to ensure that policing in our country takes place within a human rights ethic and that those officers who do not uphold the rule of law are held accountable for their actions.

The ICD, therefore, is an important pillar of that system of control that this government wants to see. It is important for the ICD to fulfil its mandate with adequate resources.

We need, therefore, to indicate that many of the ICD’s problems stem from the fact that it has never had sufficient capacity to do its work effectively. To this end, the ICD will receive a budget increase during the 2006/07 until the 2008/09 MTEF cycle.

The R4 million funding will be used to appoint four provincial heads at senior management level and 24 investigators all over the country. A further 20 investigators will be appointed in the next financial year. In the last year of the MTEF cycle, 29 investigators will be appointed.

If we were to look at our budget allocations between 2003 until the end of the MTEF cycle in 2009, the following increases will be noticeable. For the 2003/04 budget allocation, we were given R22,7 billion but for the current financial year we have been given R32,6 billion. In the last budget allocation of the 2008/09 financial year, we shall receive R38,5 billion.

Of course what is going to happen is that that budget is going to be used to ensure that we have the necessary wherewithal in order for us to be able to do our work. There is something that I would like to zoom in on relating to vehicles. This is because now and again people complain about the absence of vehicles and therefore an inability to do work because there are no vehicles.

Let me just indicate the money that we have spent to acquire vehicles. In the last financial year we used R841 million for vehicles, which amount we have upped this year to R887 million. In the last financial year of the MTEF period, we will use R941 million for vehicles.

Our graph indicates the following: that in January 2002 we had 27 000 vehicles for the Police Service. But by March this year we had 35 418 vehicles. Now, what does that mean? What it means is that our personnel vehicle ratio is, for instance, in regard to the current status: 4,39. In other words, one vehicle that the police has accommodates four people.

But it is not always the case that you will have four people in that vehicle, because there are shifts. We really do not understand why there are police officers that continue to say that they do not have these resources. Where are these 35 418 vehicles that we know we have on the ground? This is because that amount of vehicles is adequate for the police to be able to do their work.

The operational allocations we also make indicate that for operations we have R3,7 billion. In terms of this the Western Cape is going to get R415,583 million; the Northern Cape R136,935 million; the Free State R278,741 million; the Eastern Cape R475,70 million; KwaZulu-Natal R617,29 million; Mpumalanga R244,914 million; Limpopo R298,525 million; Gauteng R843,384 million; and the North West R342,683 million. This means that the average percent grant in operational expenditure in the past five years has been in excess of 105%.

Are you saying I must step down, Chairperson. Oh, not yet. I only have one minute left to talk about something that all of us should begin to look at. This is the matter of the private security industry. Given in the strike that is happening in this industry and given the fact that the big problem is that the industry itself has a record of very, very bad working conditions.

The salaries that they pay are very, very low and do not fit therefore within the realm of our own policies of a better life for all of the people.’

So, when you look at this particular matter, you must know that in your own provinces, Gauteng, for instance, has 2 008 of these companies. KwaZulu-Natal has 770; the Northern Cape has 54; the Free State has 172; the North West 193; Limpopo 446; the Western Cape 641; the Eastern Cape 319; and Mpumalanga 320.

There is a total in South Africa therefore of 4 923 of these security companies. They employ 306 407 people who are registered. I am only talking about registered companies and registered employees. But not everyone of the companies that does work in South Africa is properly registered. Not every one of the people who are working in that environment is registered.

There are many people who are undocumented, foreign nationals – who are employed by these companies, exploited and then they are not registered. Now, whatever the case is, that does not give carte blanche to people to commit crime in the name of a legitimate strike.

There is no legitimate strike that encourages the kind of crime we have seen, including the murder of workers. That is intolerable and we are going to continue to act very, very firmly against those people who are involved in these crimes.

Thank you very much.

Issued by: Ministry for Safety and Security
2 June 2006