Mawela warns Diepsloot residents against vigilantism

Mawela briefed members of the Gauteng Portfolio Committee on Community Safety on the latest crime statistics and plans to address high crime levels in Diepsloot on Tuesday.

This comes as seven people died after they were assaulted and torched in a mob attack in that community earlier this month.

Mawela says residents of Diepsloot should not allow themselves to be used in vigilante attacks by criminals masquerading as community leaders.

"People who are driving this thing, they themselves are criminals because they know that for them to commit crime, they need to create a chaotic situation to continue to commit crime."

He says there are people who are known as community patrollers, but they refuse to fall under existing structures that work together with local police.

"[It's] because they go around spaza shops and exploit money for spaza owner...when someone is a  victim of crime, they call on these people, and what do they do? They mobilise and go and commit crime."

Mawela said when seven men were rounded up, beaten and then later set alight, someone had reported a robbery to the so-called leaders.

Five people have since been arrested.

"They mobilised themselves. They picked up those children and then burned them. We are going to do everything in our power to oppose bail."

Only two of the victims have been identified as South Africans - the families of the five other men are yet to come forward

The suspects are expected back in court on Wednesday for bail proceedings.

CRIME FIGHTING INTERVENTIONS

Poor spatial planning and other environmental issues such as lighting, overgrown vegetation, unlicensed liquor outlets and inaccessible roads in Diepsloot are some of the service delivery challenges that General Max Masha listed as obstacles to adequate policing in Diepsloot.

Gauteng police have called on other departments to attend to issues such as housing, infrastructure, immigration and the socio-economic situation to help them root out criminality.

"The Department of Human Settlements to formalise the area, the department of Education to strengthen security at schools, social Development to address socio-economic issues, and Home Affairs to approve border control and regulate the entry of undocumented foreign nationals," Masha said.

Explaining the dip in police performance for the indicator crimes heavily dependent on police action for detecting in the Diepsloot precinct in the current financial year versus the year 2021/2022, the provincial commissioner says the deployment of additional resources, including members of the tactical response teams helped reinforced the efforts of local police. However, he says such interventions are not a permanent solution, and once the reinforcements are withdrawn,  if normalisation is not achieved, the local police alone are outnumbered.

"The bigger number was due to the high number of police officers we had put there. Now that they are lower, that is why it went down. But that is not an excuse. We must still make sure that we retrieve firearms and arrest those who are dealing with drugs in that space."

Following the announcement of the passout parade of another 10,000 police officers,  

Mawela said 11 of those would be deployed to Diepsloot.

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