Crime Comes Down in the Western Cape

Western Cape Minister for Community Safety has praised the South African Police, the Bambanani Volunteers, metro and municipal police, provincial traffic and all law enforcement agencies who put in many hours of work to bring down crime during the 2005/6 festive season.

Minister Ramatlakane was commenting on the release of a report by the Department of Community Safety on the achievement of its annual Safer Festive Season anti-crime programme.

This programme has now been running for the past three years. The report shows that as a result of the partnership between the police, the Bambanani volunteers and other law enforcement agencies, crime in the Western Cape declined by 27 % (27.2%) during the festive season.

During the 2003/4 festive season when the programme was first rolled out, crime came down by 18% .The following year crime was stabilized by 2%. Meanwhile, the Western Cape Arrive Alive campaign, which was part of the Safer Festive Season programme, was responsible for an 8% drop in fatalities.

"Premier Rasool gave us a target to bring down crime by 7 % and road fatalities by 5% during the 2005/6 festive season. Our report shows that a great deal of work was put in by our volunteers, police and everyone." said Minister Ramatlakane.

"We owe this success to the many hours (1 556 618) to the extra work put by our 4 560 Bambanani volunteers, the thousands of police men and women and the 1500 metro police officers who all partnered in the fight against crime." said Minister Ramatlakane.

"When we first mooted this programme with the police, we had expected to see its positive signs after only 4 years. Then we agreed that police alone cannot win the fight against crime."

"We agreed that communities are a major partner in the fight against crime, because crime is committed by members of communities. Today we walk tall and can say that the Province of the Western Cape is gradually proving to be a safer place to be during the festive season," said Minister Ramatlakane.

Commenting on the decrease in road fatalities, Minister Ramatlakane said; "This past festive season we have made have recorded a historic achievement in that for the entire period, with one accident where many people were killed at once. This happened when a minibus taxi collided with a truck on the N1 near Laingsburg killing eight people."

"This to us confirms that, our motorists and in particular those of public mode of transport (because they carry with them many people at a time) are now listening and are heeding our message of working to ensure safety and reduce fatalities on the roads."

"Now we have a challenge of addressing the number of pedestrians killed on our roads who, not only provincially, but nationally, is a huge concern as it constitutes the highest number of fatalities. We shall have to go to communities start education and make people aware on the dangers of j-walking" said Minister Ramatlakane.

Minister Ramatlakane also added that, this past festive season, the Department's Child Rapid Response Unit has achieved a 94% success in searching for and finding missing children. The Unit was only set in October last year and to date it has received calls to locate and find 85 missing children. 81 of those children were found and were reunited with their families. 2 were found dead and another two are still missing.

NB: Copies of the Executive summary report on the Safer Festive Season programme are available on request.