- The Western Cape community safety department's budget allocation has decreased by 5.79% for the 2021/22 financial year.
- The tabling of the budget comes a day after six people were shot dead.
- Communities plagued by gun violence and gangs want more visible policing.
Opposition parties have slammed Western Cape Community Safety MEC Albert Fritz over the province's slashed crime budget amid mass shootings and gang violence.
In angry responses to the budget allocation for the 2021/22 financial year, MPLs said the R739.049 million would not tackle the increasing incidents of violence or protect communities from criminal elements.
Addressing the legislature, Fritz said: "My department has particularly gone above and beyond its constitutional mandate to bring the Western Cape Safety Plan into fruition and halve the murder rate over the next 10 years.
"We have prioritised the safety of its residents and will spend R2.35 billion over the medium term.
- R20 million towards the Youth Safety Ambassador programme. In total, 1000 young people will be deployed to assist in violence prevention interventions, while supporting 'Area Based Teams" (ABT);
- R5.665 million for the professionalisation, accreditation and resourcing of Neighbourhood Watch units;
- R12.534 million to ABTs for the 2021/22 financial year for data-led and evidence-driven law enforcement deployments and violence prevention interventions; and
- R7.336 million for the growth of the Chrysalis Academy so that more young people can benefit from the life-changing 3-month residential programme.
"Having transferred most of the operational and start-up capital costs for the Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP) programme to the City of Cape Town, the department's budget allocation has decreased for the 2021/22 financial year by 5.79%. This brings our total budget to R739.049 million for the 2021/22 financial year."
The tabling of the budget comes days after six people were shot dead in three separate incidents in Mfuleni, sparking calls for more visible policing in affected communities.
READ: 6 hours, 3 shootings, 6 dead: Bloody weekend in Cape Town suburb
ANC MPL Mesuli Kama said all the crime and murder hotspots were in poor, densely populated working-class communities who lived in conditions that have not changed since apartheid.
They also have poor lighting in their areas, and no CCTV cameras to help the police prevent and investigate crime, he added.
"These are areas with high poverty, unemployment and inequality. This is the legacy of apartheid, and sadly the architecture of apartheid remains firmly in place across the Western Cape. A perpetual system of racial oppression and injustice remains firmly in place, as the DA is hell-bent on blocking spatial transformation."
EFF provincial leader Melikhaya Xego said the money set aside was not producing results.
"The MEC even goes to an extent of wasting this money on the so-called community police relations which we know very well, [will] never work.
"The police in this country operate under the system which teaches them to only serve the interests of whites. Such a system stems from colonial and apartheid times, hence the reason they will take hours to respond to calls from black communities and informal settlements,” Xego added.