South Africa’s war on crime cannot end overnight “without a strong, capable and professional police force” to lead the fight and the government is doing everything to provide the resources necessary to take the battles to the criminals, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday.
In his weekly only message to the nation, Ramaphosa noted that the capacity of the South African Police Service (SAPS) “was one of the issues flagged in the report of the Expert Panel into the July 2021 Unrest which we are taking steps to address.”
“Understaffing and lack of adequate training has had a particularly dire impact on community and public order policing,” Ramaphosa said.
In this regard, the government had allocated funding for the recruitment of 12,000 new police trainees and the first cohort was undergoing basic training, he said.
He added that the SAPS Public Order Policing Units would “receive an additional 4,000 members this financial year and arrangements are being made for appropriate training for the members.”
Although the government was doing its bit to ensure effective policing, communities, civil society, and business needed to work with the police and support these efforts, he said.
“Policing cannot be successful without the cooperation of communities. For this reason, we are focusing on expanding the network of Community Policing Forums to improve both policing and community relations,” Ramaphosa said.
NM/jn/APA