Departments of Community Safety & Cultural Affairs 2019/20 Quarterly performance

Meeting report

Department of Community Safety: Quarterly Performance Report

Ms Nuraan Gallant, Deputy Director: Strategic Services, Western Cape Department of Community Safety, took the Committee through the quarterly performance report.

In terms of Programme 1, specifically sub-programmes 1.1 and 1.2, which referred to the office of the Head of Department (HOD) and Member of the Executive Council (MEC), there were three indicators for the year, all of which were met. Sub-programme 1.3 was financial management, which had 10 indicators for the year, and all of these were achieved. Strategic Services and Communications had 12 indicators, all of which were achieved. The over achievement was in relation to the indicator for community safety media and public relations initiatives, which was due to the accelerated marketing media campaigns.

For Programme 2, which was civilian oversight, the programmes supported two indicators for the year, both of which were met. Sub-programmes 2.2 and 2.3 both had 11 indicators for the year, all of which were met. The indicator for youth safety outreach deployment was not achieved, due to the cancellation of the outreach deployment as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In community police relations, there were eight indicators for the year, all of which were achieved except for one, which was the indicator for ensuring and promoting good police-community relations.

Programme 3 was safety partnerships, which had seven indicators for the year. There was under-achievement here against their objective performance indicator, which was to create partnerships with the Department and other organisations which contributed in the field of safety and security. For the year, they had aimed to create 1 100 partnerships, a target which was not met. The office of the Ombudsman achieved all of their targets, which were four for the year. They over-achieved on one indicator -- the outreach initiatives -- due to the additional outreach activities that they undertook. They had 12 indicators for security risk management, and one underachievement for the year in relation to the transversal security manager’s meetings that were facilitated. This underachievement was due to the cancellation of these meetings as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. An over-achievement in this regard was the planned safety engagements with accredited neighbourhood-watchers. Initially, four engagements were planned for the year, but 11 took place due to requests received from accredited neighbourhood-watch structures to address ad hoc issues. The departments responded to these requests by way of ad hoc engagements in addition to what was initially planned.

Provisional security provisioning fell under programme four, and all 17 indicators were met. In security advisory services, six indicators were set for the year, and all of them were met.

Discussion

Mr F Christians (ACDP) said that when the Committee analyses these reports, targets and indicators were always spoken about, and the question of realistic targets was often brought up. With regard to sub-programme 3.1, which was the creating of partnerships between the Department and other organisations, this specific target was underachieved by quite some margin, and he wanted to know why there was such poor performance, and what the Department was planning to do in order to ensure that this target was achieved.

Mr M Kama (ANC) welcomed the presentation and showed appreciation for the work that officials at the Department had been doing. He shared the same sentiments as Mr Christians, and wanted more information about the underachievement. He referred to slide 19, and wanted to know more about how the data in the report had been collected in order to prevent any disputes over information. He also referred to slide 21, and said he wanted to know about the Community Police Forums (CPFs) which were reluctant to co-operate, and if these CPFs were supposed to be in the high crime areas. Finally, he wanted to know what was being done to address this issue moving forward, because the Department had an interest in ensuring that there were functioning CPFs.

Ms L Botha (DA) wanted to know the reasons for the CPFs refusing to participate, and congratulated the Department on their achievements, but wanted to know how this report compared to last year’s report.

Department’s response

Mr Gideon Morris, Head of Department, referred to the underachieved target in Programme 3, and said this was a new target, and was about the number of partnerships that the Department could create to place Chrysalis graduates. The methodology used by the Department had changed recently. Instead of placing Chrysalis graduates all over in small numbers, it had started to place them at particular places in larger numbers. This was a case of a poor target being set at the start of the year, and in order to act in the best interests of the students, the Department had changed their strategies of placement which had affected the achievement of this target.

He said that only a small percentage of the CPFs were not co-operating. Form the side of the Department, the Extended Partnership Programme (EPP) payment model was based on evidence that the CPFs could provide the Department with, to indicate that they were indeed performing their statutory functions as was set out in section 18 of the Police Services Act. Some of the CPFs who had chosen not to co-operate had done so because they were opposed to the project.

Adv Yashina Pillay, Chief Director: Secretariat for Safety & Security, addressed the CPF issues raised by the Committee, and said she would send further information to the Committee as soon as possible.

Further discussion

The Chairperson proceeded to take a second round of questions.

He referred to the target aimed at addressing the community safety needs by increasing the amount of safety allocation resources, and wanted the Department to elaborate on this target and whether these resources were being distributed fairly.

Mr Kama asked the Department to elaborate on the number of social crime prevention programmes per year, and sought more clarity on the number of Chrysalis graduates the Department placed in one financial year.

Mr Morris responded that the process which had been adopted was basically ongoing consultation sessions with the different interest groups and community members on specific themes that the Department then compiled a report on. A process of consultation to determine the needs was valuable, but there were also systemic failures with this process in that one could never articulate and specify the needs and requests of all the different groupings in a report of that nature. The purpose of the report was to highlight systemic failures that the Department may have identified, similar to what the Department did with the court watching briefs. Once the Department had identified the failures, the option was then to either refer the matter to the Committee, or to the police and the Ombudsman.

Adv Pillay said the CPFs that did not sign a transfer payment agreement and did not perform under the EPP, were Athlone, Kuilsriver, Langa, Langebang, Nyanga, Phillipi, Samora Machel, Sea Point and Strandfontein. The Department continued to have awareness sessions and provided training for them, but there was only so much the Department could do in attempting to form a working relationship with these CPFs.

On the question concerning the graduates, the target for this year was 630, but the Chrysalis expansion was included in the safety plan which was aimed at expanding the reach of the institution so more youth could feel support and get involved with Chrysalis.

In terms of the social crime prevention targets, the Department had a youth walk to promote the safety of youth, and that had been a joint initiative with the Chrysalis Academy. There were also women’s month events, as well as ‘16 days of activism’ programmes. Finally, regarding station visits, the Department would be publishing booklets with detailed information on all of the station visits, and these would be sent to the Committee.

Mr Christians wanted to know if the Department conducted a study on how many Chrysalis graduates went back to being unemployed once the temporary placements were over.

Mr G Brinkhuis (Al Jama-ah) thanked the Department for their outstanding work, but wanted to know about any initiatives the Department may have in mind involving mosques and churches to assist them in making the Western Cape a safer place.

Mr Morris replied that many of the temporary placements of the Chrysalis graduates got extended after one year. However, the Department had noticed a significant drop off of students once they had completed their placements, and this was linked to where they had been placed. The fact that these placements did not always lead to permanent employment had always been a challenge for the Department, and it was for this reason that in the new Safety Plan, one of the main targets was to ensure that these graduates got real opportunities to attain permanent employment. This would be done by collaborating with the Department of Economic Development.

The Department did have a target for what was called the Youth Safety Religious Programme. That was where, during school holidays, the Department partnered with various religious fraternities in priority areas. If more information was required, the Department would make this available to the Committee as soon as possible.

Mr Brinkhuis asked the Department what they were doing about the various complaints of poor police service in certain communities. 

Mr Morris said that the Department had invested and contributed to the legislation giving rise to the police ombudsman, who had the requisite experience and knowledge to thoroughly investigate all services provided by the police, and deal with complaints of this nature. The Western Cape was the only province that currently had a police ombudsman.

The Chairperson thanked the Department.

Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport: Quarterly Performance Reports

Dr Lyndon Bouah, Chief Director: Sport, Western Cape Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport, took the Committee through the presentation.

Programme 1 of the report had been broken up into four parts, with five target points that were all met and there was a 100% achievement. Similarly, in Programme 2, all 19 indicators were met. There were 34 targets in Programme 3, of which 31 were achieved. Programme 4 had 47 targets, with a 100% achievement rate.

In Programme 1, there were seven overachievements and all targets were met. In Programme 2, 16 targets were overachieved, and there was an achievement rate of 91%. For an analysis of public entities, the Western Cape Language Committee had three targets, all of which were met. Heritage Western Cape had six indicators, five of which were met, and three over-achievements. The Western Cape Cultural Commission had three targets, two of which were met.

Discussion

Ms Botha asked how the current report compared to that of the previous financial year.

Mr Brinkhuis had a question concerning the cricket season. In the Western Cape, this had come to an end due to COVID-19, but in the local leagues there was one match that had not been played to end off the season. What measures did the Department have in place in order to see that the cricket season was completed?

Mr Kama wanted an explanation for the targets that had not been met.

The Chairperson also wanted to know more about the targets which had not been met, with particular regards to the libraries. He asked where those libraries were situated.

Department’s responses

Dr Bouah said that compared to last year’s report, the Department had achieved 106 out of 108 performance targets.

The Department would engage with Western Province Cricket -- the federations were the custodians of their particular sport, so they would usually make their own decisions in this regard.

The library in Beaufort West was the library which was affected. This was because the decision was made to build a new library instead of upgrading the existing one.

Regarding the targets which were not achieved, one of them was the number of records consulted. These were the records that the researchers consult when they get to the archives. The Department had a target of 47 000, and only 40498 were consulted because there had been a challenge with the lifts in the building. Because the records were on the fifth floor and some of the records were heavy, employees needed to use the lifts, so this was why the target could not be met.

With regard to slide number 9, all the targets for the Cultural Commission had been met for the year. For Heritage Western Cape, the only target which was not met was the number of outreach programmes. The Department did not meet this target because of COVID-19. In order to meet it, the Department needed to have meetings with stakeholders in March, and this had been cancelled because the gathering would have involved more than 50 people.

Further discussion

The Chairperson took another round of questions.

He referred to the number of expanded public works programme (EPWP) employment opportunities created, and wanted to know how these were spread and where these employment opportunities were, the process involved in securing additional opportunities, and which practitioners were benefiting from this process.

Mr P Marais (FF+) said he was very interested in the EPWP being deployed for urban renewal projects. He had received many complaints when he personally visited the places where the dumping of dirt and refuse was ridiculously high. To offset this, he suggested a clean-up project which would in turn create thousands of jobs. The EPWP should be used so that the communities could be feel that something was being done in recognition of them being human, and not as a sub-species of the human race. The state of the townships was heart-breaking, and he wanted to know what was being done about cleaning them up, and what was being done to revive culture in the Joseph Stone Auditorium in Athlone.

Mr Guy Redman, Chief Director, Department of Cultural Affairs, said the EPWP in the culture sector was situated in every region in the Western Cape, and the Department could provide a detailed list of the specific townships. The components that had the EPWP were the libraries, museums, archives and cultural organisations. The focus of the programme was specifically on culture -- for youngsters who wanted a career in culture, the EPWP provided them with opportunities to become more employable. The EPWP was implemented in both the metro and the municipalities. The municipalities that the Department reached out to were in the West Coast, the Karoo area, Knysna and George.

There were 201 EPWP members that did coaching in and around the province at various schools and centres. Of the 201, 145 of them came from the social sector, which was the national Budget, and the remaining 56 of them come from the provincial Budget.

Mr Marais said that none of his questions had been addressed. He wanted to know when the Department was going to use the EPWP -- which was a job creation project -- to clean up the townships in an urban renewal programme, as there was a lot of unskilled labour in these townships as well. He did not want to know where the EPWP was operating, but wanted to know what was being done at these locations.

Mr Brinkhuis said that many of the sports and recreational facilities on the Cape Flats were in a very bad state, and wanted to know what the Department planned to do about this.

Mr Kama congratulated the Department for meeting their targets at the Mod Centres. He asked how the Department monitored and evaluated these centres, and whose responsibility it was to see that the schools linked to these centres actually participated.

Dr Bouah said the grant that the Department was involved in with the EPWP was administered by the Department of Trade and Public Works, and they worked with the national Department, and in that particular sector there were grants made available for culture and for coaching as well. The Department then participated in that grant, but the EPWP grant was for all of the various departments. The Department of Environmental Affairs and Local Government would have to apply for their EPWP opportunity in order to have the township cleaning job.

In terms of the Constitution, sports facilities fall under the mandate of the local municipality in which these facilities were allocated, so the Department would certainly have an engagement with the City of Cape Town in this regard. The total budget of the Department for facilities was R1.6 million, which was only for the upgrade and maintenance of these facilities.

Mr Redman said the EPWP had an environment and culture sector, and the issues brought to light by Mr Marais were best dealt with by the Department of Environmental Affairs and the City of Cape Town’s solid waste department.

Mr Marais thanked the Department for the clarity provided, and said that there was something radically wrong with the allocation of funds. Something must be done about this, because there needed to be an increase in sport and culture in the townships.

Mr Kama said that in the earlier presentation, there had been a new indicator which referred to the number of graduates that had been placed, and he wanted to ask the Department if they were prepared to look into creating a new indicator that looked at the amount of people using the Mod Centres.

Mr G Bosman (DA) said that the Department should engage with the various municipalities and provide the Committee with a breakdown of what the different facilities were, and where they were across the Metro.

Dr Bouah said that if such a resolution was passed, the Department would engage with the various municipalities in order to get this information.

He said target setting was very difficult when it came to the Mod Centres, because attendance was voluntary. It was also dependant on the budget each year. However, the Department collected statistics every month and this could be made available to the Committee.

The meeting was adjourned.