Chairperson, the IFP has long felt that the government should do more to address serious crime in our country. The recently released crime statistics and figures reinforce our feeling that the war against crime is not yet won, and that the government should stop trying to pretend it is so. The criminal justice system throughout South Africa is failing its citizens and crime has become a clear and present danger, and a growing threat to our fledgling democracy.
Government's collective inability to effectively identify, combat, isolate, and successfully prosecute and incarcerate huge numbers of criminals is a national disgrace. It is clear that proper political and professional leadership is lacking. It has, once again, been made evident in the latest appalling crime statistics revealed by the government that the highly centralised system of policing, much favoured by the government, is an abject failure and should be decentralised as a matter of urgency, with new and competent leadership being vested where necessary and international assistance and training being sought to alleviate obvious skills shortages.
The IFP therefore calls on government to release regular and accurate police crime statistics, which will withstand independent analysis and which will quickly identify crime trends in various areas, to allow communities to be more vigilant and increase accountability for the police service leadership, who must now be deployed in a position of high authority on the basis of performance only. Thank you.