Residents of Inanda in Durban have voiced their concern over the spiraling crime rate in the area.
Reporter Vusi Khumalo speaks to community members in Inanda:
Police Minister Bheki Cele presented the quarterly crime statistics on Wednesday. Between July and September this year, the Inanda police station emerged as the front-runner nationally, with the number of murder and rape cases, with 99 and 78, respectively.
Inanda is a heavily populated area with informal settlements and several liquor outlets. Some community members were reluctant to speak freely about what they believed were the root causes for the consistently high crime rate in their area.
But those who did speak up, like Siphelele Khango, Asisipho Bhetshe, and Olwethu Sodo, shared their frustrations around the situation.
#sabcnews #sabckzn A police satellite police station in the Amaoti area of iNanda, the community is calling for it to be upgraded to a fully fledged station. pic.twitter.com/ZrmdF52YCl
— Nonkululeko Hlophe (@Leko3) November 24, 2022
“We don’t feel safe at all in this area. We are scared even walking down the street at 5pm, we don’t feel safe even in our homes because criminals sometimes attack us at our homes. I believe that if they can add more police in our area, crime will decrease because currently the police station we have is very small, there is a high crime rate in this area, we only have a single police station and we rarely hear of anyone being arrested.”
Close to 10 000 rape cases were reported during this reporting period, nationally. Inanda emerged with the highest reported number at 78, an increase from the 67 reported cases in the same period last year.
The Plessislaer and Umlazi police stations also emerged in this top ten category in 7th and 8th place. Alarmingly, the national picture shows that the majority of rape incidents took place at the rapist’s or victim’s home.
Crime fighting community members also expressed their concerns.
Mbongeni Phewa, from the Inanda community policing forum, says he believes that there are simply not enough police officers deployed to the area.
“Our manpower from the police side is very short. The ratio is one to 1 000, that means only one police officer can service about 1 000 houses, which is quite impossible. That is why we are asking our MEC to employ more police so that we can try to fight crime. As we are here, we are volunteering; we want to assist the police manpower since police cannot combat crime alone; they need us as a community to assist them. At the moment, we are not even getting a stipend,” says Phewa.
He is appealing for their satellite police station to be upgraded to a fully fledged police station.
“Already for the past three years we have been demanding this station to be an independent police station led by a Kennel so that it will have sufficient vans, sufficient staff so that it will cater for Amaoti in particular, which is a big area and crime comes from this area. That is why we are demanding this station should be independent in this area, but I’m very happy that in our meeting last month they said it was approved in Parliament, ” says Phewa.
#sabcnews #sabckzn Residents of iNanda north of Durban have voiced their concerns over spiraling crime rates in the area. The police station is yet again leading the country with murder and rape cases. INanda CPF’s Mbongeni Phewa says they need more police. pic.twitter.com/7pWIpqCYOW
— Nonkululeko Hlophe (@Leko3) November 24, 2022
Cele has announced that some 10 000 additional SAPS members will be deployed over the festive season until the end of January next year.
