Dear Editor
With four children in the Western Cape having been murdered in the past week, the Standing Committee on Community Safety will be requesting that SAPS brief us on its plan to solve child murders.
I also will be requesting that provincial Minister of Police Oversight and Community Safety, Reagen Allen, put the Court Watching Brief Unit (CWBU) on the cases where arrests have been made.
As the DA, we express our condolences to the families of these children. It is critical for us to use all mechanisms available to ensure that those responsible face justice for the harm and destruction they have caused to loved ones of these children.
There is no doubt that there is a strong correlation between the under-resourcing of SAPS and the increase of crime in our communities. This is no different when it comes to the safety of our children.
Over the last five financial years, the number of detectives in the Western Cape have fallen from 2 792 to 2 587 – in other words, this is a decrease of over 7%. These figures further worsen case load of detectives, which already stands at an average of 250 cases per detective.
In the face of incapacitated crimefighting, we need to make use of innovative solutions to protect our children. This is why the UCT Child Death Review (CDR) Project was piloted back in 2014 and showed what is possible when a whole-of-society approach is adopted in fighting crime.
By adopting this process, multidisciplinary approaches allow for various recommendations to be made to prevent further child deaths. At the time of its implementation, the pilot project achieved a 90% success rate owing to the CDR assisting the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in fast-tracking murder cases even when the police may have not registered such cases as murders.
We call on SAPS to strengthen their investigative capacity so that our criminal justice system can work more effectively. Our children cannot continue to be victims of crime. The time for action is now.
Regards
Gillion Bosman, MPP
DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Community Safety
