By Thapelo Molefe
South Africa’s police have been told in no uncertain terms that there will be no new money to fight crime, and they must urgently become more efficient using existing or even fewer resources.
This was the clearest message on the second day of the National Policing Summit on Wednesday, where government leaders, senior SA Police Service officials and civil society gathered to scrutinise the slow progress of the Integrated Crime and Violence Prevention Strategy (ICVPS).
The summit, themed “Efficiency in Action: Optimising South Africa’s Policing Potential”, began its plenary session with a stark policy briefing by Bilkis Omar from the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service.
She warned that the country’s crime crisis was deeply rooted in systemic social and economic dysfunctions, and that SAPS could not shoulder the responsibility alone.
“The overall subtext of this summit requires that the police must become more efficient,” Omar said.
“We’ve
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