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13 June 2006

Honourable Speaker of the Northern Cape Provincial Legislature, Mme Connie Seoposengwe,
Honourable Premier of the Northern Cape, Mme Dipuo Peters,
Honourable Deputy Speaker, Mme Zelda Cjikela,
Honourable members of the Executive Council and Provincial Legislature,
Honourable mayors and councillors,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Allow me to extend a word of welcome to our special guests, those young men and women representing the youth of this province to whom we are dedicating this Budget Vote debate today. In doing so, we acknowledge once more and pay special tribute to those young people whom 30 years ago, took to the streets in protest.

We are still humbled by the unshakable resolve to take charge in facing head on the challenges of the day and determining the cause of their destiny and future by a young collective many of who are leading and governing this country at its various spheres today, some present in this very august house. Lest we forget their brave role in resisting the oppressive apartheid system. Let us continue to pride ourselves in their sterling contribution towards our democracy, freedom and creating a better life for all!

As we celebrate this historic event, let all of us, but particularly the youth of 2006 pay homage to those who have set an example of how we the youth of this day and age should be responding to challenges and problems facing us.

This Youth Day we also call on the Youth Day to emulate the example of the class of ’76 by taking up the responsibility of being at the forefront and leading the fight against crime and abuse in our beautiful province.

It is important for our youth to take charge of their destiny and the future of this province, country, continent and the world, especially since statistics have proven that the youth are the most vulnerable when it comes to crime, violence and abuse both as perpetrators and as victims!

We are therefore convinced that with the involvement of the youth and our communities the struggle against crime, women and alcohol abuse will be won and everyone will be free from these social evils.

Madam Speaker;

Significant of this year is that we are celebrating other important milestones in the struggle history of our country.

We look back to the historic anti-pass women’s march to the Union Buildings 50 years ago, the mentioned youth uprising 30 years ago, the first democratic elections 12 years ago, the confirmation of the birth of this nation when we adopted the Constitution 10 years ago. And from where we stand today we can confidently say that there is more than enough reason to celebrate and be positive.

It is against the background of the “Age of Hope,” convinced that indeed in the words of our honourable Premier earlier during her State of the Province address tomorrow belongs to us that I table the departmental budget of R58,717 million for the 2006/07 financial year.

This budget will enable the Department of Safety and Liaison to perform the monitoring and oversight function as a very significant aspect of the democratisation of our country, specifically in relation to the transformation of the police to function effectively as a legitimate institution within a democratic dispensation.

The Department of Safety and Liaison constitutes the main oversight structure in relation to police transformation, effective service delivery and performance, police conduct, accountability and relations with communities in the Northern Cape, deriving its mandate and functions from section 206 (3) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.

The Department is assisted and supported by the Independent Complaints Directorate, the institution that is specifically mandated in terms of section 206 (6) of the Constitution to investigate misconduct and criminal offences committed by police officers.

The budget will also enable the Department to execute its related core function which is the co-ordination of the creation of safety and security in the province, as well as the related traffic management line function.

In executing the afore mentioned functions we have planned to focus on the following strategic delivery areas that will also inform and influence our expenditure for the 2006/07 year.

* Intensify implementation and sustenance of the integrated crime prevention and coordination strategy.

* Continue to strengthen and capacitate local government to play a leading and more meaningful role in crime prevention and the creation of safer communities.

* Develop, implement and sustain local crime prevention programmes and projects at each one of the 21 crime weight stations.

* Intensify implementation and sustenance of grass root level community safety and crime prevention campaigns.

* Realisation and sustenance of a more structured oversight and monitoring programme.

* Provide meaningful policing policy advisory services.

* Continue to profile and promote traffic law enforcement and road safety as important components and elements of safety and security.

* Intensify traffic law enforcement, visibility, road safety campaigns, combating of corruption and law administration.

All our activities and interventions in the province are focused on the 21 crime weight stations, as well as strategic specialised units and components at provincial and area levels such as the Serious Violent Crime Unit (SVU), Organised Crime Unit (OCU), Precious Metals Unit (PMU), etc.

Our understanding and reasoning is that we will be most successful in improving safety and security levels in the province, if we succeed in transforming the police, improving service delivery, police conduct and performance of which the main yardstick is reduced crime levels, in those areas that collectively accounts for between 45 and 50 percent of the reported crime in the province.

The Department will significantly increase its regular oversight visits to police stations to monitor and oversee police performance and conduct as well as foster a culture of police accountability whilst simultaneously promoting community police relations.

Part of monitoring is also to find out where the gaps and challenges are in respect of service delivery, policing and policy so as to recommend or take corrective action.

We will further establish and thereafter coordinate a Provincial Oversight Forum (POF), Department, Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) and provincial Community Policing Forum (CPF) Board, for a co-ordinated and collaborative approach towards monitoring and oversight.

An important development is the quarterly performance evaluation sessions that the Department is holding with the provincial management of South African Police Service (SAPS) at the end of each quarter. These sessions also enable the Department to track and evaluate SAPS compliance to policy and implementation of monitoring and inspection recommendations.

Allow me, therefore, at this point to briefly reflect on the state of policing in the province whilst at the same time highlighting challenges and planned interventions by this Department.

Capacity to police

Our human capital for policing in the Northern Cape Province stands at 4 601 functional police officers and 1 499 civilian or public service personnel, with an overall male representation of 67 percent and 33 percent female.

This staff complement is augmented by 1 474 reservists, who during the past year alone worked a total of 88 022 hours.

Allow me, honourable Speaker, to acknowledge with pride yet another first not only for the province but also the country. The struggle for women’s emancipation has definitely gone a long way in the right direction and history has once again been made when the first ever woman Provincial Commissioner was appointed in the Northern Cape Province from 1 November 2005 in the person of Commissioner Zukiswa Mbombo.

We are now eagerly awaiting the appointment of the Deputy Provincial Commissioner: Policing in the Northern Cape. The post was vacated in November 2005 and the selection process has been finalised.

In as far as operational capacity is concerned progress has also been made with the allocation of 1 155 entry level constable posts to SAPS Northern Cape for the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF). To date 554 entry level constables have been recruited and are at varying levels of their training. For this year we have to recruit 510 entry level police officers to be trained for the province.

However, it needs to be mentioned that as a province whose demographics do not always speak to the national demographics, one of the biggest challenges facing us is to recruit, attract and retain police officers to achieve equity targets in relation to African representation and secondly for rendering of 24 hour police services at stations in rural/remote areas.

Over 20 police stations are presently not rendering 24 hour service

Another challenge is the question of psychometric testing and the driving licence requirement that continue to hamper effective recruitment from the Northern Cape community.

Although the National Commissioner has approved the amendment to the recruiting policy by condoning the driver’s license requirement for enlistment for identified poverty stricken areas especially within Pixley ka Seme region, it is important to widen the net to other equally impoverished and disadvantaged areas.

To this end the Department has commenced with a research project on the SAPS recruitment policy and its impact on attracting provincial candidates. Our findings will be submitted to national with the aim of influencing policy change or recommending corrective policy interventions.

The provincial policing vehicle fleet stands at 1 256 vehicles with 243 of these vehicles purchased and allocated during the past financial year.

The biggest challenge facing SAPS in relation to fleet management is budgetary constraints that do not allow for suitable vehicle types to be purchased for the road conditions (semi-desert, dunes, rural, rocky, rivers and streams) compounded by vast distances.

In as far as police infrastructure is concerned we have opened one community safety centres and two police stations during the past year in Galeshewe, Steinkopf and Aggeneys. The building of the fourth police station in Kuruman is nearing completion and will be opened in the near future.

The tender for the building of a second community safety centre in Augrabies/ Kakamas has been advertised and construction will hopefully commence before the end of the 2006 financial year.

Police conduct

As Department responsible for monitoring police conduct, we also from time to time receive, intervene and investigate community complaints of police misconduct, dereliction of duty by the police on the basis of racial bias or inefficiency, police brutality and break down in community police relations.

In order to enhance police accountability to communities for their performance and conduct but also to promote community police relations as the Constitution enjoins us, the Department has commenced with accountability meetings where we facilitate constructive interaction and engagement between the police and communities on policing and service delivery matters.

Madam Speaker,

Whilst we admit that there are still challenges in the context of representation and equity, transformation, service delivery, attitude, conduct, resource allocation and management as well as efficiency we have to acknowledge that we have indeed made some significant strides in the transformation of the SAPS and generally our police officers are doing a good job out there, most of them are indeed proud public servants who continue to serve their communities with pride and utter dedication and diligence.

This is evident in the fact that according to the national performance chart, the Northern Cape Province is doing exceptionally well and is holding the first position in relation to detective services and second position in relation to overall efficiency (province) as well as crime prevention for 2005/06.

Madam Speaker,

Unfortunately on the not so good side, one of the biggest challenges to effective service delivery presently is the fact those 12 years after the new dispensation the service delivery boundaries of the SAPS are not yet aligned to the municipal or constitutional boundaries of this country.

I am nevertheless pleased to announce that with the unfolding restructuring process announced by the honourable Minister Nqakula, SAPS will have and must indeed optimise the opportunity to correct this anomaly and do away with the old order operational boundaries.

It needs to be mentioned that the restructuring of SAPS and particularly the phasing out of area offices and strengthening of local police stations is a policy decision that has long been taken and advocated by the White Paper on Safety and Security, 1998 as per the following quote:

“The decentralisation of policing functions to the lowest possible level within the SAPS has become a core policy tenet which informs national policing policy.

This focus on empowerment of local policing aims to ensure that the diverse needs of communities are met by innovative responses SAPS station commissioners. Thus, decentralisation will grant station commissioners more autonomy over human resources and asset management, policing priorities and strategies they adopt to meet them.”

Since the pending restructuring is particularly aimed at strengthening and improving service delivery at local level, it is imperative for SAPS in the spirit of the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act (IRFA) to consult and co-operate with local authorities, sister provincial and national departments such as justice, correctional services, health and social services as well as affected communities and civil society institutions on the restructuring process and specifically the clustering of police stations under accounting stations.

As Department responsible for ensuring that policy relevant to safety and security does not become the exclusive preserve of SAPS as it was in the past apartheid dispensation, the Department of Safety and Liaison will be facilitating and monitoring this consultative process to ensure an open, transparent and accountable implementation of the restructuring policy.

It is equally important for this Department to ensure that SAPS share information with and explain to police members, their families as well as communities the nature, extent and impact of the restructuring so as to alley any fears that jobs or ranks will be lost or policing and service delivery would be negatively affected.

It is further important in the context of integrated development planning and co-operative governance that we also ensure that the SAPS restructuring process is aligned to the implementation plan for the five year local government strategic agenda.

It is only then that we will be sure that effective integrated accelerated development, underpinned by effective local crime prevention or community safety strategies can indeed take place and seamless, coherent and efficient governance and service delivery can be realised.

Another related policy aspect that the Department will be involved and concerned with is the amendment of the South African Police Service Act, 1995 that was promulgated before the adoption of the 1996 Constitution.

The Department will be co-ordinating the process of consultation and gathering of public input towards the amendment of this important policing legislation.

Communities are encouraged to participate in the process to ensure that provincial peculiarities and needs are adequately taken into account and are reflected in the final legislation.

Honourable Speaker,

We are greatly concerned and saddened by the increasing number of suicides and brutal murder of families amongst whom innocent children, wives and partners by police officers using their service guns or like in the last instance a firearm that was supposed to be in police safekeeping.

Allow me, therefore, to reiterate our most sincere condolences to the families and colleagues of the late members and their victims. Our prayer is that the almighty father will grant them peace and solace and the courage to accept the loss of their loved ones, even if they cannot find answers or understand the entire why’s that they may have right now. May all the souls of those departed rest in peace.

While it would be important for us as Department and SAPS to further look into weaknesses and gaps in the existing employee assistance services, as well as the question of accessibility of firearms to police officers as contributing factor to this phenomenon, it is important to urge our police members as well as their families, partners, friends and neighbours to make use of the employee assistance services presently available within the institution.

The Department of Safety and Liaison in conjunction with SAPS will rope in other role players such as honourable members of the portfolio committee on safety and liaison who regularly undertake oversight visits to police stations, as well as members of Executive Council (ExCo) who are served by police officers as drivers and protectors, to embark on regular intensive outreach programmes for police officers, their supervisors, colleagues, families, partners and the community at large on awareness, education and advocacy on employee wellness and the importance of speaking out and creating support networks.

Apart from the afore mentioned intervention SAPS will continue with its normal in house proactive and reactive employee assistance programmes such as stress management sessions, suicide prevention sessions, debriefing sessions and sessions on HIV/AIDS; colleague sensitivity, moral regeneration and be money wise. Social workers, chaplains, psychologist and related professionals are also readily available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any member who would need these services to avert atrocities and enable the police to deal with the challenges, both personal and work related, facing them daily.

Honourable Speaker,

This budget is tabled against a vision of consolidating interventions aimed at realising and sustaining the systematic decrease in serious and violent crime over the next few years culminating in a 10 percent decrease by 2014. This target as set out in our Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS) will and can only be achieved if we continue to join hands as government, private sector and civil society in fighting crime in an integrated and coherent manner.

It is therefore important to ensure this house and the people of the province that the Department is playing its role in the context of the provincial development vision as articulated in the PGDS and will this year continue to co-ordinate, lead and mobilise all provincial efforts across al sectors towards the achievement of the 10 percent crime reduction target by 2014.

As a province, we are making progress in reducing the levels of crime. There has been a decrease of just over two percent in reported contact crime in the province during 2004/05 compared to 2003/04. Crime categories that have been showing a downward trend include amongst others murder, assault, indecent assault, neglect and ill treatment of children, etc.

On the other hand, rape in particular but also all forms of robbery remain to be serious crime problems within the Northern Cape Province. According to police crime statistics there has been a consistent rise in rape statistics in the province since 2001/02 with a two percent (28 cases) increase in reported rape cases in 2004/05 compared to 2003/04.

We are eagerly awaiting the release of the crime statistics for the 2005/06 financial year by the national Minister when we shall all know whether our efforts both from law enforcement and integrated social crime prevention perspective have indeed paid off and have contributed towards the further reduction of crime levels as per our annual target of between seven and 10 percent.

We can confidently say that the budget apportioned to the Department for the year 2006/2007 will enable the Department of Safety and Liaison to deepen and intensify its efforts in leading, mobilising and co-ordinating even more aggressive and intensive campaigns and interventions aimed at sustenance and improving on reduction levels already achieved in various crime categories.

Key amongst these campaigns will be public education and awareness campaigns, law enforcement operations and developmental interventions specifically aimed at proactively preventing the violent contact crimes of rape, violence and abuse of women and children, assault, murder and robbery as well as alcohol and drug abuse.

All what we do as a Department will seek to strengthen cross cutting partnerships and involvement, intensify and improve liaison, integration, collaboration, support and cooperation not only amongst the various safety and security role players and stakeholders but also relevant economic and social sector stakeholders.

The Department will do all in its power to ensure that aggressive and intensive campaigns are rolled out and spearheaded by CPFs and municipalities for effective co-ordination, integration and mobilisation of interventions take place at local level. We will focus on making sure that all municipal IDPs include programmes on the following campaigns:

1. The 365 days of no violence against women and children, with specific focus on vigorous implementation of the Anti-Rape Strategy, the resolutions of the Anti-Rape Indaba held during December last year, as well as the Domestic Violence Act and National Instruction 7/1999 version two on implementation of the Domestic Violence Act. The latter national instruction was published for general information in the Government Gazette dated 3 March 2006 and is intended to give clear direction to members of the SAPS on how to respond to complaints of domestic violence in terms of the Act.

2. Anti substance abuse with specific focus on the implementation of the Anti-Substance Abuse Indaba resolutions taken at the indaba held during October last year.

3. Moral regeneration and building social cohesion and community resilience towards crime and criminality, with specific reference to implementation of the moral Charter and the resolutions of the Moral Summit held in April of this year. Intensified focus on the area of moral regeneration and community resilience is very important in the context of the development vision of the Northern Cape Province and more specifically in relation to achievement of the high level PGDS development objective of developing requisite levels of human and social capital.

The community remains one of the critical partners in fighting crime and creating a safe and secure environment. It is therefore important that communities are actively involved in policing issues and the creation of safer environments and communities. Community policing forums are therefore important vehicles for the delivery of effective policing services.

This Department has long been preaching that it is important for local government to come to the crime prevention party. We are particularly encouraged that our honourable President reiterated this sermon during the imbizo last week in Namaqua.

The President also hinted as this Department has also been trying to do that no development can effectively take root and flourish if we do not simultaneously attend to the question of social development and cohesion and that any Development Plan would be incomplete if it does not reflect plans for social development and particularly plans to address and deal with social problems such as alcohol abuse that give rise to all sorts of other problems including crime and violence.

It is for this reason that the Department approached district municipalities and facilitated the establishment of community safety forums as co-ordinating structures for implementation of community safety and crime prevention strategies.

The Department will during this year continue to strengthen and capacitate local government to play a leading and more meaningful role in crime prevention and the creation of safer communities by establishing community safety forums in the five category B municipalities and at least all municipalities that covers the 21 crime weight stations.

The Department has also appointed an IDP champion to engage and assist municipalities with the development and inclusion of integrated community safety plans that speaks to the local crime problems and focus areas for intervention in their Municipal Integrated Development Plans (MIDP).

Honourable Speaker,

The importance of traffic management services in the context of safer communities and crime reduction can never be overlooked. Whilst the traffic function is normally regarded as a nuisance function that only seeks to generate revenue, it is important for us as a Department to profile and promote this function as an important element of safety and security and that it is performed because the safety and security of all road users irrespective the mode of transport used or whether pedestrian, commuter, driver or passenger is very important. We cannot continue to lose our human capital on our roads through road accidents.

As a province we have in less than one month lost people amongst who two of our traffic officers stationed at Richmond in two separate road accidents.

In both accidents we also lost one police officer another municipal traffic officer and 10 members of the public, six of who were children.

Road accidents also have a significant impact in the economy of our country. Except for the loss of lives, injuries as well as damages to vehicles and other property as a result of road accidents contribute to lower levels of productivity due to absenteeism, financial losses etc.

The Department of Safety and Liaison will therefore intensify the Arrive Alive Campaign which as we have previously said is not an occasional event, but an everyday campaign that informs all our traffic operations both from a proactive and reactive perspective. Our plea to all road users is to embrace it as a way of life.

Proactive road safety campaigns will be our main focus in that they primarily aim to educate and raise public awareness about the importance of observing certain basic rules in the spirit of arriving alive at our various destinations.

High visibility patrols, the Driver of the Year Competition, the Taxi Driver Pilot Competition, Road Safety Bill boards, National Road Safety Education Programme for schools in conjunction with the Department of Education.

It is important to note that the province has been selected to host the national driver competition, a flagship project of the national Department of Transport aimed at improving road safety through the enhancement of the driving skills of heavy vehicle drivers.

It is also important to mention that Reagan van Wyk from Kleinzee, Namaqua will be representing the country at the international driver competitions to be held in Luxemburg during September this year after he emerged as one of the winners during the national driver competitions in Mpumalanga last year.

Another challenge that we are busy addressing is the whole issue of taxi problems from a law enforcement and commuter and transport safety perspective.

We have already facilitated the establishment of inter sectoral provincial taxi forum as platform for communication and consultation amongst the various stakeholders to avoid unnecessary illegal activities in this industry, including the blockading of national roads.

These road safety campaigns are all aimed at complementing our law enforcement operations, which are in the main after the fact and reactive in nature and geared towards inculcating respect for the road traffic rules and regulations.

Effective law enforcement will receive a boost when we open a new traffic station in the Phokwane Municipal area during the second quarter of this year and with the deployment of the 30 traffic officers who will be completing their training on the 23 July, which is about a week away.

Part of our strategy to enhance our effectiveness in policing our roads is the clear permanent branding of all traffic vehicles to enhance visibility of these vehicles. It is a fact that the branding of vehicles used for traffic law enforcement vehicles presently leave much to be desired and we can not continue to have a situation where we have private vehicles that except for the blue light on the roofs are altogether not marked in any way as traffic law enforcement vehicles.

It is also a fact that this practice also poses a challenge in that it creates a conducive environment for criminals to abuse this practice for criminal purposes such as hijacking, in transit robberies and escaping arrest whilst illegally using private vehicles with blue lights and therefore posing as police or traffic officers.

Honourable Speaker,

It is a well known fact that the Department of Safety and Liaison has for a very long time in fact since its inception some 10 years ago had been severely understaffed. We are glad to announce that the transfer of the traffic management function to our Department has indeed assisted us to move significantly in respect of attaining the critical mass which we needed desperately, in that funds could be allocated for the filling of the most critical posts in the Civilian Secretariat Programme as well as finance and corporate support services.

We will continue this year to increase our capacity through filling of a number of identified posts across all programmes as well as through training and development. For the first time the department is introducing a bursary scheme to augment the skills development levy allocation for targeted capacity building in key delivery areas.

Our capacity enhancement programme will be concentrated around the following functions:

a) Finance

b) Supply Chain Management Unit

c) Management and Financial Accounting support

d) Revenue collection to enhance department’s capacity to reconcile, verify and collect all outstanding revenue due to province

Corporate services

Security and records management, policy and planning, information technology (IT) and communication, transport management, human resource management.

Line functions:

* Monitoring and oversight,

* Social crime prevention,

* Community police relations,

* Road safety,

* Natis helpdesk and transport law administration (abnormal loads and permits),

* Inspectorate.

It however needs to be mentioned that the Department is faced by the challenge of lack of sufficient office accommodation that could hamper the implementation of our recruitment plans. Currently the Department’s provincial office is operating from five different premises, a situation that is not conducive for effective management and supervision. We are however in the process of investigating options to overcome this constraint.

Madam Speaker,

This budget that we are presenting to this House is one that says to us indeed there is an emergence of hope, hope that the challenges and problems relating to crime facing our province will defeated when we tackle crime and violence collectively as a partnership between the private sector, civil society and government.

We can collectively become crusades against these evils and challenges as well as collectively lead the moral regeneration of our society. We owe it to our youth sitting here and those that are in other sectors.

This call is necessitated by the fact that we understand that the role of everyone is central in the fight against crime and produces lasting results.

The budget of the Department of Safety, Security and Liaison for the financial year 2006/07 should be viewed within the context of making our communities optimistic about their future and the future of our province.

The provincial crime prevention strategy is central to maintaining this hope and strengthening our people’s confidence in safety and security services offered by government institutions.

In conclusion, Madam Speaker,

I also wish to express my sincere appreciation to first and foremost our honourable Premier Mme Dipuo Peters. Thank you very much honourable Premier for your visionary leadership, guidance and support; honourable colleagues in the provincial ExCo and legislature for your support and guidance.

Provincial Police Commissioner Mbombo and her management team as well as all members of SAPS including reservists and civilian personnel, for a job well done in ensuring the safety and security of people of the Northern Cape.

All the various stakeholders and role players, volunteers, government officials particularly those in the Justice Crime Prevention Security (JCPS) Cluster, communities, business, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community based organisations (CBOs), community policing forums (CPF) and community safety forums (CSFs) for all the inputs and efforts, co-operation and assistance.

Lastly but not least my Department, team safety for diligently executing the plans that are funded by the budget tabled here today.

Honourable Speaker, I now table the budget for safety and liaison in anticipation of an insightful and constructive debate.

I thank you!

Issued by: Department of Safety and Liaison, Northern Cape Provincial Government
13 June 2006