ook who’s talking now
One has to admire Deputy Minister of Justice Johnny de Lange for telling the truth when he said that government was overwhelmed by crime. Addressing Parliament last week De Lange said that the fight against crime was hopelessly paralysed by mistaken policy decisions, unprofessional personnel and a massive shortage of resources and accountability.
It is not often that senior ANC politicians, let alone Cabinet members, admit that it had failed the voters. When De Lange's former colleague, the then deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge admitted that something was wrong at Frere Hospital, following Dispatch's expose on the babies' deaths, she was fired by President Mbeki, purportedly for going to Spain to attend an Aids conference – without Mbeki's permission.
But Mbeki cannot fault De Lange's figures – reported by Rapport yesterday – which makes spine-chilling reading:
l A huge percentage of the two million crimes reported annually were never solved. A “significant amount” of cases were thrown out of court due to a lack of evidence or charges being withdrawn.
l Half of the two million crime scenes were never visited, due to too few experts able to collect evidence. Police have 2082 experts to search for clues on crime scenes. This means every expert has to visit three scenes daily. They have too little resources: every two experts share a car, five have to share a cellphone and three share a compute.
l Police have only 1033 forensic experts to analyse evidence in labs.
l There are only 54 forensic experts to analyse blood samples in drunken driving cases. The backlog is “grotesque”
l There is a huge shortage of detectives. Only 21700 of the 130000 police members are detectives. They too, share resources like computers, cars and phones
“This means only 15 percent of the police's total workforce is focused on solving crime. This system suffers of a lack of oxygen and is the result of insufficient policy decisions.”
The situation in the criminal courts is not much better. De Lange said more than 700000 cases are annually thrown out or withdrawn, and only six cases per month are on average concluded in every court in the country. He said district courts are only in session for three-and-a-half hours a day and there is a 17 percent vacancy in the State prosecuting department.
De Lange warned that the police, courts and prisons immediately had to be revamped according to a seven-point plan.
“We have not necessarily taken the right decisions over the past 15 years or used resources efficiently.”
Will Mbeki for once accept his colleague's word or will De Lange now too be tainted as a whinger?
Amazing - when the ANC is totally in the corner and has no excuses left to explain their grotesc non performance they usually ask some white useful idiot to do their bidding. Screw De Lange ! He is one of this hopeless mob !
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