The KwaZulu-Natal authorities are going to have their hands full this festive season as they try to manage crime with an influx of tourists in excess of 700,000 people.
While the City of Durban, the busiest region in the province during the festive season, battles with high crime rates and infrastructure challenges affecting service delivery,
Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube, Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Transport, Community Safety, and Liaison Sipho Hlomuka, and the South African Police Service will release their safety plan for the festive season.
The government delegation will stage the event at the Mpumalanga Stadium in Hammarsdale, western eThekwini.
“The theme for this year is ‘Leaving no one behind in our journey of building a crime-free KwaZulu-Natal’.
“On this day, the government will hand over tools of trade to safety structures, such as Community Police Forums and the KZN Community Crime Prevention Association.
“Government is ready to welcome all our visitors with open arms, but it will deal decisively with all criminal elements to ensure a peaceful festive season,” the KZN provincial government said.
Crime in the province is still a worrying factor, as the latest the South African Police Service (SAPS) statistics show high levels of murder, rape, and hijackings.
From April to June this year, 1,584 people were murdered, 1,879 were raped, and 835 were hijacked.
Inanda police station continued to record the most rapes and murders nationally.
The province of KZN has been branded the capital of gun violence, according to Professor Witness Maluleke, a Rural Criminologist, University of Limpopo, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
“This is a continuing worrying factor with limited repercussions,” Maluleke told IOL in an earlier report.
This was in response to two shooting incidents that took place in KwaMashu, north of Durban, where four people were shot dead.
Two men were gunned down at a men’s hostel on Kholwa Road in KwaMashu at around 5pm last Monday.
The following Wednesday morning, another two men were found dead with gunshot wounds, KZN SAPS spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nqobile Gwala confirmed.
The bodies in the second shooting were found in the Qhakaza area of KwaMashu Men's Hostel at around 6am.
“Some of the obvious contributory factors to the high spate of gun violence in this province can be geared towards lawlessness, easy accessibility to dangerous weapons, disobeying the rule of law, inclusive of the toothless criminal justice system (CJS), social ills, and normalising violence, among others,” Maluleke said.
IOL