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7 September 2007

There is a thought I would like to share with you today in the context of an event like this one where we have been drawn together to talk about issues that relate to our national security.

My entry point, of course, must relate to how far we have come as a people and as a nation in South Africa. Some critics and analysts argue that we should have gone even farther than we have on the road to thoroughgoing freedom and democracy. But, there is no precedence anywhere in the history of the world where the democratic process took the thirteen years of our dispensation to arrive at a point, in just thirteen years, where it would be said all was in place and the democratic process had been finalised for all to enjoy, on an equal footing, the fruits of that dispensation.

We in South Africa have understood that the process of consolidating our democracy was going to require a lot of resources and time as well as commitment firstly to defend the gains made when the democratic breakthrough happened and to consolidate the process going forward.

There are three phases, which are part of the elements that define South Africa when our people were simply not speaking with one another. Whatever speech was necessary as a consequence of natural interactions between people was characterised by orders and commands on the basis of master and servant relations. When we started speaking with one another, we mostly spoke past one another.

But, the interaction today is part of the new tradition we are defining for ourselves: To speak with one another so that, as we begin to understand each other, we search together for the answers to the many strategic questions that we face as we are challenged to produce circumstances that will lead to a better life for all our people.

We who are gathered here have been deployed to develop tactics to create an atmosphere of safety and security for our people as our own contribution towards a better life for all in our country.

It would be a serious miscalculation on our part if we were to continue to believe that the country's law enforcement agencies can work in silos and succeed in the work to fight and win against crime and criminality. It would be silly to want to define the private security industry out of the fight against crime. That means, we need to discuss ways and means in which we can co-ordinate what we do so that the specific work we do becomes only an aspect of the broad frame of national security.

The main thrust of the work of the South African Police Service is to prevent crime from happening in our country. Of course, there is a huge mandate on our shoulders to protect our people by prevent crime and fighting the criminals wherever they may be. That work is indeed the responsibility of the law enforcement agencies but, if they work alone, they will not succeed. We need partners in the war against criminals.

The masses of our country, given the size of our population and the fact that the criminals are only a small portion of that population, will always be the best part of the arsenal we have against crime and criminality. To that extent, therefore, we are mobilising our communities to contribute to the creation of better conditions for safety and security for all. In many instances, our people in the communities where they are know who in their areas engage in criminal activities. They, therefore, are the best repository for information that can help flush out the criminals and facilitate their arrest.

In a slow but deliberate fashion, some communities are working together with the police in the context of community policing and in the areas of our country where that is happening, crime levels have gone down drastically. We are consolidating community policing through a revised Community Policing Forum and police reservist system.

There are other partnerships we have formed with the business sector, labour movement and other civil society formations.

Crime levels in the country are going down and various changes we are effecting, including better police training, shifting of better police resources to the local police station and producing better qualified police managers, are making our policing strategy better. Apart from human resources that are becoming more professional in policing, we are also deploying high technology in the fight against crime.

When all of that is combined with developments around community policing, we are certain the fight against crime and criminality will be taken to a higher level to provide better protection for our people.

There are three crime types, house and business robberies and vehicle hijacking, that showed an increase in the statistics we compiled for the past financial year. Those crimes require a co-ordinated approach that should include the private security industry, given that it is members of the industry who guard homes and businesses, whose presence in those areas would also deter the hijacking that often happens around people's homes.

We need to find a formula, therefore, that will enable us to define our positions in the same trenches in the fight against crime, and in accordance with the dictates of our national security strategy.

Issued by: Secretariat for Safety and Security
7 September 2007