Go after criminals, Mbalula told

POLICE Minister Fikile Mbalula is resolute that the SANDF is needed to help police crush the hold gangsters have on Cape Flats communities, where violent gang warfare has reached a crescendo in recent months.

Manenberg and Hanover Park avenues came to a standstill yesterday when Mbalula went on a walkabout to assure residents that the police meant business in their quest to bring the warring gangs to heel.

Mbalula was accompanied by Western Cape Police Com- missioner Lieutenant- General Khombinkosi Jula and a large contingent of police who conducted a search-and-seize blitzkrieg on passing cars.

Street corner gangsters were overheard demanding of ministerial bodyguards that Mbalula also address their concerns, while one taxi driver, Carl Klint, said he was “driving human beings and we are scared. Please help us, Mr President”.

He urged Mbalula to go after criminals and not “bugger around, harassing innocent people”.

In Manenberg, Peace Forum activist Ronald Snippers tackled Mbalula on reports that the SA National Defence Force would be deployed in hot spots in the Western Cape and Gauteng and said that martial law would harm poor neighbourhoods where not everybody was engaged in gang activity.

Snippers said Mbalula should focus on upskilling people and creating employment opportunities.

“Policing has deteriorated in such a way that policing is ineffective. Police over the past 20 years have become more stupid. You cannot send the army to the poor people of South Africa,” said Snippers.

Mbalula said the “army was not being unleashed on the poor” and he was not going to sit around waiting for government departments to provide community projects for youth, while innocent people were being terrorised by gangs.

“We are not going to bring the army to be stationed here to chase innocent people. We are bringing the army to assist in getting rid of weapons on the ground and getting those who are dangerous to be arrested. The police will be at the forefront.

“We are using the army as a multiplier. It is not a state of emergency or martial law. We are doing that because we have seen that the gangsters do as they please and kill innocent people caught in their gang violence.

“We want to get rid of that. We arrest gangsters every day. Some of them are in Pollsmoor, operating from there, conducting criminal activities on the outside,” said Mbalula.

As a group of youth, displaying gang tattoos, sat on top of a bus shelter listening to Mbalula and taking photos, he said that the police were there to sweep the area clean of them and to crush the “balls of steel” that they boast about and which supposedly made them brave.

“And I’m saying that because they are brave, they kill, they hijack, they terrorise, I say crush them balls, crush that fake audacity, with the full might of the law,” bellowed Mbalula. “We’re on top of them and every day we are making headway.”

He said innocent people were captured by the gangs and the police were there to release them, so that they could feel safe and protected.

The police would be intensifying their efforts with several roadblocks under way on the Cape Flats.

“I want those guns, I want to confiscate them. The soldiers are not coming here to kill anybody. They will deal with anybody who is combative and who is wielding dangerous guns and shooting.

“We will deal with fire with fire, but the soldiers are going to come here to help us sweep the area for those guns.”