Police Minister Bheki Cele says he is confident the interventions being made in Diepsloot to deal with high the levels of violent crime and undocumented migrants will bring stability to the area.
Cele and Home Affairs Minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, visited Diepsloot on Friday, where they held a meeting with residents following protests by residents over the high rate of crime in the area and poor police responses.
Residents have accused undocumented foreign nationals of being behind the spate of murders in the area.
Minister Cele says he’s confident that stability will be restored to Diepsloot, where a total of 16 South Africans were murdered between October last year and last week Sunday.
He says 12 detectives have been brought in to investigate these murders and that 16 new police vehicles have been made available for use by the Diepsloot police: “Ours, including this meeting today, is the sustainability of the stability that you see here and we are very sure, until the members of the community and their structures agree that the situation has stabilised, we are going to stay here.”
He says 120 police officers will be on the ground in Diepsloot — working with Home Affair immigration officers.
Minister Motsoaledi says 25 immigration officers will be deployed to Diepsloot for three months, to verify who is documented and who is not.
Motsoaledi says he is horrified by the tales of violent crimes that were told by residents during the meeting.
He says the people are not angry towards foreign nationals but are aggrieved by the violent criminal acts perpetrated against the community: “And I repeated the question and asked them. If everybody here is documented, will you be happy, and they said NO. The situation goes beyond that. It is not an issue about documentation, it is criminality. And they stood one by one and told us. It is not easy for any woman to be raped in front of their husbands with a gun on and children. And they said they believe and know that it is Zimbabwean nationals, who were doing that. So, these are issues we must face head-on. We can’t put our head in the sand, for fear that we will be labelled.”
