Lesufi to brief media on Gauteng crime plan

Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi is to address a media briefing on crime in the province, with the MEC for cooperative government and traditional affairs, who leads the province’s anti-crime work, in the room.

The briefing was announced in a broadcast carried by eNCA, in which the premier was handed the floor to open the media briefing. The MEC for finance is also present.

What the province has said it will do

The MEC for cooperative government and traditional affairs leads the fight against crime in the province, in terms of the relationship between the provincial government, local government and the South African Police Service. That is the structure the briefing sets out, and it is the structure that matters for anyone who lives in a metro where a ward councillor, a metro police unit and a police station all have a hand in what happens on the same street.

Gauteng is the country’s most populous province and its economic centre. Crime in its metros is a daily cost to the people who live there, to the small businesses that trade there and to the commuters who move through it. A briefing on the province’s crime plan is therefore not an administrative event. It is where the province says what it is doing, and where the public gets to hold it to that.

The state’s work against crime

The South African Police Service, the metro police departments and the provincial government all carry responsibilities in Gauteng, and the record shows the state does act on them. Operations, deployments and prosecutions are the work of named institutions, and where that work is done well it deserves to be said plainly. This briefing is the province’s own account of that work, and it is the right place to test it.

What the briefing does not yet answer is the detail. The transcript of the broadcast does not state the measures the premier will announce, the figures behind them or the date of the briefing itself. Those are questions to be put to the province, and the answers will be reported when they come.

What it means for the people who live here

For a resident of Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Sedibeng or the West Rand, the practical question is simple. What changes on the street, in the taxi rank, at the shopping centre and at the police station counter? A crime plan is only worth the paper it is written on if the resident can see the difference, and the province knows that as well as anyone.

Gauteng’s residents have a right to a province where they can move, trade and sleep safely. The institutions that must deliver that are named, they are funded, and they are accountable to the people who pay for them.

Source: eNCA (YouTube), Lesufi to address crime in Gauteng, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seFSUfZ9S3A