Zille and DA must step up crime fight

6 September 2016 

The DA run Western Cape government and City of Cape Town must get their acts together to play a more active role in curbing crime at grass roots levels rather than continuing playing a lame blame game, says the Western Cape ANC.

This follows the latest crime statistics indicating that the Western Cape remains the murder centre of South Africa, drug related and gang crime are the highest of all provinces and that seven of the top ten murder hotspots are in the Cape!

The figures for the Western Cape shows transit robberies are up by 60%, hijackings by 33% and house robberies are almost 20% up for the last recorded period. Illegal firearms and ammunition remains a big problem.

ANC Western Cape community safety spokesperson Pat Lekker says: “It unacceptable that a third of the 16 CCTV cameras in a crime riddled area like Khayelitsha is not working and that there is no camera at all in a crime hot spot like Harare (with the fourth highest annual murder rate in the country)! There are more cameras at the entrances to Zille’s ivory tower office in the provincial building in central Cape Town than in the whole of Khayelitsha!

“Both the province and city burns millions of Rand every year on all sorts of activities, but it cannot properly maintain the CCTV system or expand more cameras to much needed high crime areas like Nyanga, Gugulethu, Harare, Khayelitsha, Kraaifontein, Delft and Mfuleni! The majority of CCTV facilities in the province and city are around CBD’s and main access transport routes.

“Instead of not spending its capital budget by billions of Rand since 2006 when Zille became Cape Town mayor, the city could have diverted and installed a large number of cameras and infrastructure right in the burning township areas to fight crime better. The province must also start to muster its resources to run the secretariat to curb crime and gang activities as intended in policy documents. Zille must and her DA team must stop squealing and shirking responsibility or quit governance in order for more competent people to take over.”

Issued by Cobus Grobler on behalf of ANC Western Cape, 6 September 2016