Anti-gang unit is the answer but SA needs more

IT’S EARLY days, but the police’s newly established anti-gang unit has had an impact in fighting the scourge of gangsterism, not just on the Cape Flats, but across South Africa.

While we welcome the arrests of gangsters and those who abet them, communities will feel much safer if, and when those accused of terrorising neighbourhoods are convicted and locked up.

Right now the unit comes across as a political play, especially in the Western Cape where the ANC has been losing ground against the DA since 2009 when it lost control of the province.

Addressing Parliament’s portfolio committee on police yesterday, the unit’s Leon Rabie told politicians that it had already made 33 arrests from 33 cases in the Western Cape.

The South African Police Union should also be commended for dropping its application to interdict the unit’s operation on what can only be described as frivolous grounds. One DA politician in Cape Town welcomed the court action, but his point was about scoring political capital.

In the Eastern Cape the unit made 10 arrests stemming from nine cases. And in Gauteng 19 cases had 33 arrests, including that of a former football star whose property allegedly housed a drug lab.

The rise in gangsterism should also be seen in the context of the general lawlessness which has pervaded South Africa over the last years. One only has to listen to the evidence being heard at the State Capture Inquiry to see how South Africa was almost turned into a gangster state, in similar ways in which fragile states are turned into narco states.

While there’s genuine willingness to fight gangsterism and the corruption from politicians and officials that breed it, there’s also a concerted campaign to derail these efforts by populist politicians linked to gangsters, and who benefited from the proceeds of their crimes.

The anti-gang unit is the answer to a question of violent criminals, but for a long-lasting solution we need to look at the beneficiaries of crime and lawlessness, and have the courage to jail them.