Minister of Police and African National Congress (ANC) National Executive Committee (NEC) member, Bheki Cele, said integrated efforts to fight crime in the country are succeeding.
Cele said some of the crimes include illegal mining, cash-in-transit heists, and gender-based violence among others. He was addressing a media briefing in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg, during the ANC NEC meeting as part of the party’s Peace and Stability sub-committee.
Cele said President Cyril Ramaphosa has instructed the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster to work as a cluster to end illegal mining in the country.
“We have finalised a structure that will be led by the police, defence, Home Affairs, and state security, in a concentrated effort to deal with zama zamas.
This does not mean that we have not been dealing with zama zamas. The complaint was that we’ve only been dealing with level one people, the zama zamas, but not the middle-level people and kingpins,” said Cele.
The Minister highlighted that they have categorised the zama zamas from level 1 to five. He said they have already started arresting middle-level people who control illegal mining in the country.
“We have moved up to the middle level. For instance, we have arrested nine people that we believe are in the middle level and kingpins. Those people own beautiful houses in Carletonville, all the furniture is important, Italian. The Special Investigative Unit has already attached 51 of their cars and seven houses, to the amount of R38 million,” said Cele.
The Minister highlighted that most of the illegal mining activities are in Gauteng, Free State, North West, Mpumalanga and Limpopo.
On the cash-in-transit, the Minister said despite the recent resurgence of daring robberies, police have had successes in this regard. He mentioned that the police quick response and enhanced intelligence has led to the prevention of some of the heists, and that some of the suspects were either killed or are facing criminal charges in courts.
“People don’t talk about the shootout responses where 19 suspects were killed in Makhado, Limpopo. We’ve had success in KwaMashu, KwaZulu-Natal and in Gauteng. We have arrested a cash-in-transit kingpin in Mpumalanga, and police are really working, assisted by intelligence,” elaborated Cele.
The Minister however acknowledged that they have been lacking in the fight against gender-based violence.
He dismissed reports that the failure to deal with the scourge, is because of delays with DNA samples laboratory, adding that more than 34 000 lab results were released in a short space of time to help the courts prosecute in this matter.
Cele applauded the police Operation Shanela which has resulted in the arrest of the country’s most wanted criminals.
“Since its launch on 8 May, 174 000 suspects have been arrested. This for outstanding warrants of arrest for murder, car hijacking and house robbery among other criminal activities,” said Cele.
The Minister added that in the last quarterly crime statistics, most violent crimes in the country have gone down, and attributed this to the police crime combating programmes.
