CHAPTER ONE

1.0       INTRODUCTION

The situation cannot be tolerated in which our country continues to be engulfed by the crime wave, which includes murder, crimes against women and children child trafficking, drug trafficking, armed robbery, fraud and theft.  We must take the war to the criminals and no longer allow the situation in which we are mere sitting ducks of those in our society who, for whatever reason, are bent to engage in criminal and anti-social activities.  Instructions have therefore already gone out to the minister of safety and security, the National Commissioner of the Police Service and the Security Organs as a whole to take all necessary measures to bring down the levels of crime.  (President N. R. Mandela, 17 Feb. 1995 Cape Town).

Part of the response to the President’s speech was the development of the SAPS 1995 ‘Community Safety Plan’, a package of short-term policing measures aimed at tackling the priority of crimes in the country.  In May 1995, an inter-departmental strategy team, composed largely of civilian officials, began the process of drafting a long-term crime prevention strategy, which would become known as the National Crime Prevention Strategy (NCPS).  The intention was that the long-term strategy would tackle the root causes of crime, in parallel to the police’s community safety plan, which would deliver more effective responses to crimes, which had already been committed or planned.  This bifurcation is essential to an understanding of the shift in government crime prevention policy in the five years since the NCPS was adopted.  At that time, the tough, crime combating approach was contained in the community safety plan (and later the various police plans), and the planning and implementation processes for those were entirely cabinet has asked us to design the process which will eventually culminate in a comprehensive and holistic National Crime Prevention Strategy.  The NCPS, which eventually emerges should be owned by the broadcast possible cross-section of South Africa’s population, and should go beyond a mere police response to crime.  In considering the process, which should be followed, this committee should bear in mind the complexity of the causes of crime and therefore pay proper attention to political, social and economic causes and manifestations of crime.  If this committee succeeds with its task, the NCPS could result in answers to the question.  What is crime prevention all about?  It could result in a recognized and coordinated government response to crime, and in a greater role for civil society and communities in the prevention of crime.  (Mufamadi, May 1995).