Speaker
Premier of the Western Cape Ebrahim Rasool
Fellow Members of the Provincial Cabinet
Members of the Provincial Legislature
Leaders of various communities
Invited guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
Comrades

Speaker

Crime is an issue that has a whirlpool of consuming emotions associated with it: rage, terror, grief, violation, and a sense of meaninglessness.

Crime is both the cause of these emotions in the survivors and the result of these emotions in the perpetrators.

No matter which side of the gun you look at, there is a human being living his or her life, feeling his feelings, searching for meaning and longing to be free."(A quotation from Cathy Park)

Speaker.

This year we concluded our 3rd democratic local government elections and celebrated the 10th Anniversary of our most important and fundamental document, our Constitution.

These are sure signs of our maturing democracy.

Yet, there remains a number of challenges that threaten the very foundation of this democracy i.e. poverty, inequality and crime.

Speaker

Twenty-four days from today, South Africans will be commemorating the 30th Anniversary of June 16 a turning point in our country's history.

In 1976, 30 years ago that day, young learners in Soweto took it upon themselves to challenge tyranny that was, of the Apartheid government and Bantu Education.

June 16 remains an unforgettable milestone in our country's struggle for national liberation.

I would fail in my duty, if I do not mention some of them, thanking them and their families for those sacrifices.

Some of the names that come to mind include Hector Zolile Peterson, the Guguletu Seven, Ashley Kriel, Nkosinathi Hlazo, Patrick Madikane, Andile Majola, Fezile Hanse, Robbie Waterwitch, Colline Williams and Anton Fransch.

To them we say " SIYABULELA"

Speaker,

In our endeavour to cement the age of Hope and the threshold of prosperity, we table the Departmental budget - of R180 million for the 2006/7 financial year.

This budget is against a background of the systematic decrease in serious and violent crime over the last few years due to the twin principles of integrated crime fighting and community participation.

This budget's intended purpose is build upon this winning formula to support, augment and compliment the various budgets from our partners, the security agencies within the safety and security cluster, i.e. the South African Police Services, the Department of Justice, The Directorate of Public Prosecutions, the Asset Forfeiture Unit, the Directorate of Special Operations and the National Intelligence Agency, amongst others.

Collectively, the budgets of these agencies demonstrate integration, seamless and holistic government service delivery.

Speaker

Even though we are winning the battle, today we still see various attacks from groupings that are hell-bent to wither away the many achievements and strides we continue to make in our Province.

Our journey towards realising the threshold of prosperity is being seriously hampered by numerous challenges that seek to undermine the advances we have made since the dawn of our democracy.

These include:

Gangsterism, drug trafficking and conflicts associated to this illness in our society

• The recent sporadic resurgence of gang conflict that erupted in Hanover Park,
• The rise of gangsterism in our townships like New Crossroads, Guguletu, and etc where young boys are forming rival groupings terrorising people.
• The outbreak of the recent shooting incidents within the taxi industry;
• The much abhorred upon incidents of violence during the current security industry strike;
• The globalisation and internationalisation of Drugs and Organised Crime and the resultant violence it spreads;
• The ongoing violence against women and children; and
• Continuing activities of illegal poaching of abalone and its related conflicts

Speaker as this Criminal Justice Cluster we will not allow these threats to advance any further.

Therefore this budget that I present today is one that says to us, that there is indeed an emergence of hope, hope that the challenges we are facing will be over come when we tackle crime and violence collectively as a partnership between civil society and government.

As the Department, we have the responsibility within the national programme of action (of a People's contract) to Build Safer Communities- building safer communities in partnership with local government.

Speaker, it is important to briefly reflect on some of our last commitments and the achievements thereof, as it remains the pillars and building blocks for ongoing work to consolidate our Democracy and building peace, friendship and stability within our province.

In 2005 my Department committed itself to further developing our social compact and the building of social capital and cohesion of communities through social relations, social network, social values and norms which reduce the levels of serious and violent crime.

The key strategic commitments of the Department were:

• Strengthening of the Secretariat and the building of a culture of human rights through the establishment of an investigative unit within the complaints centre for alleged policing transgressions; and
• Ensuring that the complaints call centre is operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in all-3 official languages.

• The investigative unit albeit in its foetal phase is up and running with staff being deployed into field for investigations and members of the unit are no longer office bound.
• This operational approach is an attempt to show that ours is a government that is both responsive to the needs of our community and one that truly cares.
• The centre communicates in three official languages thus creating an environment of accessibility and accountability to fulfil the spirit of Batho Pele.

• The strengthening of effective and sustainable partnerships through co-ordination, enhancement and training of community safety and security structures- Community Watches, Community Policing Forums and Bambanani Volunteers.
• The curriculum of both the Chrysalis Academy and Gene Louw Community Safety Academy is being re-orientated towards building sustainable human capital of our community structures and that of civil society.

• The Department trained 1392 community volunteers in the field of safety and social crime prevention;
• The 750 Bambanani Train safety volunteers have received Grade E Security Officer's qualifications with further upgrading to Grade D level by September this year; and
• In addition to this the citizenry-training manual for volunteers, which is geared towards building patriotism and non-racialism, is currently in the process of being accredited by the South African Qualifications Authority.
• Let me also mention that 700 of our Bambanani Volunteers have now graduated to become reservists in the South African Police Services

• Strengthening institutional structures, intergovernmental relations, and co-operative governance through the role out of Community Safety Forums in key regions with a view to developing integrated security plans within the IDP's.

• To this end the Department provided technical expertise to develop security plans as part of the IDP's in local communities as well as providing funding in the amount of R1 million to 5 district municipalities to set up Community Safety Forums.

• The Department has provided funding for social crime prevention projects, research, institutional and administrative support to Community Police Forums and all other community safety structures for the development of localised social crime prevention projects with a special focus on the presidential nodes of Beaufort West, Khayelitsha and Mitchell's Plain.

• We further committed R570 000 to local CPF's, the Area boards and the Provincial board for administrative support to ensure its continuing sustainability. Currently 168 CPFS and 16 sub-forums are in place.

• Strengthen the ideal of the Freedom Charter that the ''People Shall Govern'' in a substantive manner through continuous interface between government and communities.
• The facilitation of community policing policy input into the policing policies and plans.

• The Department conducted 26 Imbizos as well as a number of public meetings and 9 rallies across all regions in the Western Cape reaching approximately 60 000 members of the community directly.
• We further mobilised 4560 Bambanani community volunteers who participated directly in our programmes.
• The success of this programme has seen a decrease in contact crime by 27 % in particular during the last Safer Festive Season programme.
• These statistics have once again confirmed that the only real way to ensure safety is through active community - government and inter-governmental co-operation.
• The joint pilot programme between my Department and Education on the 40 schools has now grown to 100 schools for 2006/7 and a further increase of Bambanani Volunteers from 200 on those schools to 500 for the coming financial year.
• We will aim to drive a mass based civic education programme in partnership with our civil society. Here our churches and religious leaders will be invited to drive the mass based civic education programmes at schools that will be aimed at ridding our schools of drugs, gangs and criminal activity at schools.

• We were charged by the Premier to reduce road fatalities by 5% and to this effect the implementation of the integrated motor vehicle strategy and well enhance inter-agency and intergovernmental road safety management with the objective of meeting the Premier's target.

• To this end we reduced road fatalities for the last festive season by 8% and by over 35% for the recent Safer Easter Programme (where only 11 people were killed as compared to 27 for the previous Easter holidays).

• The continued capacitating of inter-agency co-operation i.e. the High Flyer Task Team in order to fight organised crime.

The 60 joint High Flyer task team members comprising of the Prosecutors, SAPS, NIA, DSO, AFU investigators and litigators all were sent for intensive training in finanancial investigations and the complex area of Organised crime, where the Department spent R1-million rand

• The training of the inter-agency co operation is continuing to bear successes which included the conviction of the following gangs and high flyers under the POCA Act:

1. Purden Malgas a member of the Junky Funkies gang- sentenced in the 25/9/05 to 6 years imprisonment
2. Darrel Cedras- a member of the Junky Funkies gang on the 22/12/05 to 6 years imprisonment
3. Marius Adonis- a member of the Junky Funkies gang -sentenced on the 10/3/06 to 6 years imprisonment
4. Trevor Booysen -a member of the Americans gang sentenced in Oudtshoorn to 3 years imprisonment
5. Zane Coericious - a member of Americans gang sentenced in George to 3 years imprisonment.

Speaker

An integral link to the integrated high-flyer strategy has been the role of the Asset Forfeiture Unit to seize the assets and in particular property used in crime.

We can record some examples to this effect:

• The seizure of a house in Woodstock being used for the manufacture and production of the drug Methamphetamine (TIK), currently judgement of the appeal by the accused in the Constitutional court is still pending,
• The seizure of a house of an alleged drug lord "Boere" Parker in Elsies River which was upheld in favour of the AFU by the Supreme Court Of Appeal,
• Preservation orders were also obtained in respect of 5 shebeens as part of a joint SAPS/AFU initiative in recognition of the fact that these shebeens are generators of violent crime in the community.

Speaker, it is encouraging to witness that our courts are now convicting more gangsters through the POCA law and forfeiting more assets to the state.

Speaker

• The South African Police Services continue to prioritise within its plans the various crimes especially reducing crimes against women and children. This is also in line with the national cabinet resolution to reduce contact crime by between 7-10%.

• We must report that the Western Cape has been the only Province to meet cabinet's national threshold by reducing crime by 7.5% in the 2005/6 financial year.

It is our resolve therefore, to continue to work towards the downward trend of crime.

Speaker, just this past few days, our police in the Western Cape made a huge drug bust when they raided a houses in Table view and confiscated drugs valued at R3-million.

Just yesterday, again our men and women in blue received a tip off from members of the community in Mfuleni and went on to raid a house and confiscated dagga with a street value of R3 million.

These major breakthrough by our police is a result of a continued partnership with our communities.

I need to thank our Provincial Commissioner Petros and his team of women and men for the hard work they continue to put in.

Speaker, also allow me to pay a special tribute to the 10 (one was a reservists) men and women in blue, those police officers who were killed in the course of executing their duties in defence of our communities in our Province.

I want o thank their loved ones, their families and those who supported them while taking up duty to become police officers in this country.

We are truly indebted to them

Speaker, understanding the challenges of better service deliver, we shall have to continue to open police stations and bring police services closer to communities.

Fully-fledged police station status given to the following communities:

• Kwa- Nonqaba
• Da Gama's Kop
• Kwa Nokuthula

At the same time, Speaker, the following areas, policing contact points were established inLwandle and Sir Lowry's pass.

In addition to this, the SAPS, in its endeavour to enhance its level of operational effectiveness and efficiency, established operational rooms and crime offices in areas where crime is potentially high.

These operational rooms are currently up and running at the following stations:

• Khayelitsha
• Mitchell's Plain
• Nyanga
• Kraaifontein
• Philippi
• Bellville
• Wynberg
• Cape Town

The safety of our rural communities especially farm workers and farmers remained our top priority hence the implementation of a rural safety strategy last year.

The SAPS are to ensure easier access to policing services in our rural farming areas launched 10 rural mobile community service centres.

Complimenting this service, the SAPS is the roll out of resources including 50 4x4 vehicles.

Speaker

Due to the social disparities within our province the vast majority of the historically disadvantaged youth are still bearing the brunt of the legacy of our past suffering from lack of skills, unemployment and poverty.

This current social reality that confronts the vast majority of our youth makes them the most vulnerable grouping of our society to commit crime.

These gangs are rife in Guguletu, New Crossroads, Old Crossroads and even spreading to Khayelitsha.

They call themselves with names like Amapalestina (the Palestinians), Ama- Afghanistan (Afghanistans) and so forth.

These new challenges however demonstrate more clearly the break down in our family units and failure to protect our young children.

Our failure to address these root causes will be an affront on the legacy of our youth who fought and sacrificed there lives for the liberation of our land.

Let me also take this opportunity and call on our religious leaders, the churches and all civil society formations to join us taking a moral stand against the ills that are plaguing our society.

We can only become a crusade against these ills and together lead the moral regeneration of our society.

We owe it to them as leaders sitting here, and those that are in other sectors.

We all have a civic duty of doing something in promoting good citizenry, moral leadership, especially in these trying times, when we are confronted by these challenges

Speaker, the department together with our partners will continue to actively build community partnership in the fight against crime at a local level:

The capacitating and mobilisation and training of various community structures and a social network will form the core of our work forward.

Speaker, we will continue to train our youth from the disadvantaged communities at the Chrysalis Academy.

The Department will train 200 youth in leadership and cadreship as well as Civic Education programme so that they become role models in building a social cohesion and sharing of norms and values.

We are geared to deliver on the SIYABULELA programme focussing on women in this year, which also marks the 50th anniversary of the 1956 women's march.

The Department, as per the Premier's direction, will provide for 400 women to receive training in trauma counselling by the end of August with an additional 200 to be trained further.

This budget will further see the implementation of our newly developed integrated anti rape strategy, which is both a preventative and a responsive strategy.

Within the strategy, the abuse of children and women will continue to receive attention.

The prevention programme through the implementation of our HOOC programme would be accelerated within the integrated rapid response unit programme with the Bambanani Volunteer programme playing a key role.

Since its inception in September last year the Rapid Response Unit has heralded numerous success in finding the missing children.

Of 192 reports received of children going missing 184 were found alive, while 5 are still missing and a further having been found dead.

DRUGS

Speaker, our policing agencies will continue to break the shackles of the drug manufacturers, producers and peddlers, through concerted search and seizure operations, confiscation and the destruction of drug factories.

The scourge of drug abuse and drug trafficking and in particular the drug TIK continues to wreak havoc amongst our communities.

We would be accelerating the implementation of our anti-gang strategy, which includes integrated anti-drugs strategy linked to the high-flyer projects (POCA Act) in the high risk-targeted communities.

GANGSTERISM AND ORGANISED CRIME

Speaker,

It must be understood that gangsters have become the foot soldiers of a much more sophisticated underworld economy, engaging in serious and violent crime, money laundering, human trafficking, drugs peddling, arms smuggling amongst others.

As part of our continued commitment and strategy to mobilise communities against crime, we will be hosting a Community Indaba and a series of Consultative meetings to empower communities to rehabilitate their children away from gangsterism.

ROAD SAFETY

Speaker, the Department will be finalising the Motor- Vehicle Accident Prevention initiative for its implementation in the current financial year so as to reduce the trauma and budgetary constraints on the relevant spheres of government.

Pedestrian safety will receive serious attention in the period ahead as it constitutes 48 % of fatalities nationally.

The public transport safety and enforcement towards the recapitalisation programme and to neutralise taxi conflict, would be implemented through the RTMCC and inter-departmentally with the Department of Transport.

TAXI CONFLICT

It is clear that the attacks were carefully planned shootings aimed at preventing government from carrying out its recapitalisation programme that carries a scrapping allowance for old minibus taxis to be replaced by new ones.

Whatever their motives, we remain confident that government's work led by our Police and other agencies is on track.

We will continue to stabilise the latest outbreaks of conflict in the industry.

Our police have been hard at work launching search and seizure operations in areas where there was an outbreak of taxi shootings.

In Delft a total of 21 firearms have been confiscated and 108 arrests were effected since the outbreak of shootings,

In Mitchell's Plain, 23 firearms were confiscated and 26 arrests were effected,

In Bellville, 5 firearms were confiscated with 20 arrests,

In the West Metropole we confiscated 4 firearms and 81 arrests while in the East Metropole 32 firearms were confiscated with 9 arrests.

These achievements demonstrate that, the police will not tolerate violence within the taxi industry. It cannot be condoned - innocent lives are being lost in the process.

SOCIAL COHESION

Speaker, the social mobilisation of communities to become active participants against crime within a developmental state, is an absolute necessary precondition to building peace and stability.

Speaker,

Lastly, no service delivery can be possible without our government's departmental structure and employees being properly transformed and aligned to meet the needs of our communities within the context of a developmental state.

To this extent the implementation of the restructuring process of the management structure is nearly completed

IN CONCLUSION

Speaker as part of the peoples contract between this government and our communities I commit my department and the criminal justice collective, to the following:

• Bring down contact crime by between 7-10 %
• Training of 2000 community members. These will include the training of 200 youth at risk for leadership and development and 600 women to receive training in victim counselling. The other 1200 will be trained in citizenry, social crime prevention and security.
• Deployment of 500 Bambanani Volunteers in gang and violence- affected schools
• Deployment of 750 Bambanani Volunteers on trains to work with the SAPS Railway police unit
• Investing R2, 5- million for social crime prevention in the Presidential nodes of Khayelitsha, Mitchell's Plain and Beaufort West
• A further investment of R4, 5 for social crime prevention in all other communities identified as crime risk
• Increase the capacity of the Rapid Response unit by deploying 250 Bambanani volunteers to find missing children.
• Provision of R250 000 worth of equipment for Neighbourhood watch.
• The deployment of 2000 Neighbourhood Watch within communities, during peak periods such as the festive season and the Easter holidays.
• A further reduction of road fatalities by between 5- 7% as set out by the National government
• The implementation of a 24 hour traffic service in the province.
• The compilation of safety audits within targeted high risk communities
• The investment of R2 million to implement our HOOC programme for the safety of children.
• Strengthening of the Security Risk Management
• We will also be hosting a Community Indaba with a view to look at strengthening our community policing forums, consolidating our community orientated strategy against gangs.
• Investing a further R500 000 to capacitate the High Flyer task team and lastly
• We will be driving the moral regeneration campaign where we will be working with civil society leadership and formations in our Province

Strengthening of the Secretariat with full investigative capacity is one of our priorities that will go with our commitment to beef up the investigative capacity of our Police detectives.

It is for this reason we have adopted this year, as the Year of the Detective-to bring the investigation capacity of the SAPS to full strength to enable the police to build water-tight cases that will result in convictions.

Speaker,

Let me end by thanking the Acting Head of the Department Mr Omar Valley for holding the fort since for the past year.

I also want to thank the following heads of Agencies in the Province for their sterling contribution and commitment in the fight against crime and to building a Safer Home for All:

Provincial Commissioner Petros, the Head of the Metro Police Service Bongani Jonas, Head of the Provincial Directorate of Public Prosecution Advocate Rodney De Kock, Head of Directorate of Special Operations (Scorpions) Advocate Adrian Mopp, the Head of Asset Forfeiture Unit Advocate Hermione Cronje, Provincial Head of the National Intelligence Agency Mr Donovan Nel, the Regional Head of the Department of Justice Hisham Mohamed.

Let me also take this opportunity and thank my family who have been supporting me, throughout.

Lastly, I also want to thank Rhoda Baazier, the Provincial Chairperson of the Community Policing Board, and the thousands of members of our local Community Policing Forums and Bambanani Volunteers who without their sacrifice we would not have been able to bring down crime.

Let me end, Speaker by reminding ourselves of our task to build a new type of Youth so that we can be able to consolidate the gains we have made.

As President Mbeki puts it in his letter on the ANC Today of June 17, 2005.

The President wrote:

"Despite the fact that today we are free, we are still confronted with the task of developing a new type of youth.

"This is because our movement has a continuing responsibility to achieve the liberation of all our people- liberation from poverty, and underdevelopment, from racism and sexism, from ignorance and disease, from a legacy that infected some with a dehumanising inferiority complex and imbued others with an anti-human superiority complex, from a value system that places the personal acquisition of wealth above everything else."

I believe that each of our contribution, whether big or small, by government and civil society, we are making a difference, like drops of water joining together until eventually they form a river.

THANK YOU