Call for ANC to lobby for tougher sentences
HUMAN Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has urged the ANC policy conference to propose tough sentences for people involved in the rape and killing of women and children.
In an interview with Independent Media on the sidelines of the conference, Sisulu, who is also the chairperson of the ANC’s sub-committee on social transformation, said they want to stamp out violence against women and children.
Sisulu said this was a matter the ANC was taking seriously and they want to lobby for tough sentences for the people involved.
“Something is wrong with the social fabric of our society. We need to find out what has gone wrong. How do we as the ANC respond to this,” said Sisulu.
She said they will also have to engage religious leaders on how they can help. “We will do something about the protection of women,” she said.
The ANC policy conference will have to come up with a proposal to lobby for tough sentences in the courts.
She also spoke out strongly about the delays in government to provide services to the communities, saying it has to try to respond quicker to the needs of communities before service delivery protests flare up.
“Where we have a role to play it is important to take time to reflect about what are the bottlenecks,” said Sisulu, adding that, in doing so, government would be able to contain the anger in some of the protests.
“There has to be analysis about what are some of the delays. There has got to be a way (about) what each bureaucrat does every day. There needs to be re-energising of the public service for service delivery to be what it should be,” said Sisulu.
The government has faced a string of service delivery protests in the past few years.
Communities in the past few weeks have gone on the rampage in service delivery protests and destroyed public and private property.
This followed complaints that the government has not delivered on some of the promises it made in the communities.