Metro’s crime issues worry MEC

Safety in Nelson Mandela Bay’s northern areas is a sore point for Finance MEC Oscar Mabuyane, who hopes to mobilise residents to fight gangsterism.

Speaking during a media lock-up after announcing the allocation of R105m for the department of safety and liaison, Mabuyane said thinking of the northern areas just conjured up images of people being gunned down.

To this end, he hoped to rope in residents to combat crime in communities.

“The actual work of capacity building and bringing in more police is a national function but ours is to mobilise civil society,” he said.

“Government alone can’t fight that gangsterism.

“Those gangsters patronise our people and don’t see anything wrong while people are dying every day.

“We’re going to up our game in terms of getting closer to communities by getting some volunteers to complement what the police are doing.

“We need community intelligence because we’ll forever be trying to catch a moving target,” Mabuyane said.

He said the element of “thuggerism” was extending into black townships, which was another thing that needed to be looked at.

The department provides an oversight role while monitoring police performance and facilitates social crime prevention initiatives.

Bethelsdorp Crime Prevention Forum chair Karen Kemp said even though the budget had increased by 5% from the previous year, this money never trickled down.

Kemp said crime prevention forums in some provinces received a stipend, but not in the Eastern Cape.

“We’re working very hard out there because we have yearly programmes.

“We do our best to work in communities to have safer environments and at times our lives are threatened, but they don’t take all this into consideration,” she said.

CPF Mount Road Cluster secretary-general Timothy Hendricks echoed Kemp’s sentiments and said they had to ask private companies to fund certain programmes.

“There’s no dedicated budget for CPFs,” he said.

“We live off money from various departments.”