Mpumalanga Premier Refilwe Mtsweni-Tsipane has committed to making crime-fighting one of the high priorities for her administration.
Mtsweni- Tsipane was addressing the first day of the Crime Prevention Summit being held in White River.
Mtsweni-Tsipane says government is working to establish a new modernised and efficient justice system to fight crime.
Besides human resources, she has also committed to provide the necessary highly powered resources to take criminals head on.
She lamented some of the recent crimes that took place in the province.
“Not a day passes without us hearing harrowing stories about violent crimes in our communities, criminals are now targeting healthcare facilities and care workers. Just last week a hospital in Carolina became a target of criminals while an ambulance was hijacked. We are still reeling in shock after the brutal death of Hosi Mnisi of the Mnisi traditional authority in Bushbuckridge and later his wife Shaleen.”
Implementation of policies
Meanwhile, Professor Somadoda Fikeni is of the view that lack of honesty and failure to implement policies are some of the major contributing factors to most of the crimes taking place in the country. According to Fikeni, the country needs to look at the ecosystem that breeds crime to effectively deal with the scourge.
“We have focused on the hardware of the society and forgot the software, the values, the principles the character formation of the people, who are supposed to enforce things. In the absence of that you cannot have any consciousness of patriotism, because it will be me, myself and I, even citizenship will be sold for R500.”
Fikeni says SA needs to reflect about what was promised and what has been achieved thus far:
