Parliament of the Republic of South Africa.

National Assembly.

The need for a parliamentary investigation on the impact of the crime of extortion in South Africa, with specific focus on the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal:

The Motion we are debating today, calls for a Parliamentary process to investigate the impact of the crime of extortion in South Africa, with specific focus on the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

As the ANC, we believe by calling for a Parliamentary process, the drafters of the Motion are affirming that the established Portfolio Committees in Parliament in general and the PC on Police in particular, should play its oversight role to ensure that the police deal with the crime of extortion.

We believe that the Portfolio Committee on Police will be guided by facts around how the police are dealing with extortion and other crimes, and in the end, make their own determination on the next course of action. The PC on Police has representation of all parties in Parliament and therefore it is perfectly suitable to look into the matter of crime extortion.

At the outset, we should make a point that the African National Congress is very much concerned about the rise in the crime of extortion in our country.

Extortion undermines the Rights of our people as enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic. These includes the Right to life, to freedom of trade, profession and freedom of expression.

We cannot allow criminals to make the life of our people unbearable under the democratic dispensation that we fought so hard for.

The crime of extortion impact negatively on business operations, it undermines service delivery processes of government, many businesses will close because the thugs take the monies they did not work for from businesses.

Over time, we have seen how criminals stall the construction of infrastructure under the disguise of being business forums that should be given 30%, despite the fact they are not intending to provide any service. This is wrong and should not be tolerated!!

We are told that even pensioners in some parts of the Eastern Cape are required to put some of their grant money on their windows for these thugs to collect. These extortionists are making also the lives of our elders unbearable. Former President Nelson Mandela, once cautioned us that “A society that does not care for and value its older people, denies its roots and endangers its future”

This for us, is a clarion call to all of us to afford our elders the support and protection they deserve from the broader society.

We cannot allow this cruelty against our elders cannot be allowed to continue. It must be stopped!

We are arguing that contrary to the view expressed in the Motion that the state is failing to deal with crime. The state has registered progress in dealing with some serios crimes like in the crime of cash-in-transit robberies, which marked a decline as reflected in the crime stats released by the Minister of Police last Friday.

We also note, the decline in the crimes of murder and sexual offences, excluding the crime of rape. These declines may be marginal however, any slight decline in crime should be noted as we collectively work towards a significant reduction in those crimes.

We are however still concerned with the crimes of assault with intention to cause bodily harm, assault GBH, rime of common assault and the crime of attempted murder, as they continue to show increases.

However we have observed that the causative factors of these crimes in the main include arguments, misunderstanding, road rage, provocation, vigilantism and mob justice, just to mention the few.

These factors point to the question of individuals in society electing to resolve their differences through violent means.

Yes, police must do their work, of preventing and combating crime, equally, as a society we are duty bound to pay special attention on the causes of these crimes.

This means that we should encourage our people to address the misunderstandings amongst themselves through talking to one another.

As Parliamentarians, we should encourage our communities to resort to negotiations to resolve their differences. We should encourage our local radio stations to find ways of encouraging our people to solve their differences in a peaceful manner.

We should change the public mind on the value of talking to one another to resolve our differences.

Honourable Members, if we are to deal with crime, one of the things we should also focus on is the capacity of our law enforcement agencies to deal with crime. In this regard, we commend the intervention by government over the past few years of increasing the recruitment of police personnel. This recruitment will go a long way in capacitating the police and thus add to police visibility.

We also note that the government is on course in strengthening the coordination of the work of the Justice Crime Prevention and Security cluster to fight crime. As we speak today, the JCPS cluster of Cabinet is meeting to look into the matter of strengthening their coordination and collaboration.

We also note that government has made interventions to strengthen the intelligence community to ensure our fight against crime is strengthened, through intelligence driven interventions.

We also note the collaboration agreements that are undertaken by government through the police department to ensure the working relationship between the police and metro police to fight crime. These initiatives are to be rolled out to provinces in our country.

These measures, therefore, says to us, we will be inconsistent with the facts if we are to argue that the state is failing to deal with crime. The facts are pointing that the state is doing its efforts to deal with crime.

We strongly believe that the police alone cannot win the fight against. We need a collective efforts from all of us as members of the community, the civil society movements and the institutions of traditional leadership to deal with crime. We therefore, urge our communities to work together with the police to deal with crime.

We encourage our people to come out and report crime and criminal activities in their communities, including the crime of extortion.

We are aware that those who are victims of the crime of extortion are threatened not to report and therefore they are fearful to report extortion. We urge them to report the crime and that the police should provide them with the necessary protection they require.

We conclude by re-iterating that a call for Parliament to investigate the crime of extortion can only be welcomed if we appreciate that the Portfolio Committee on Police is better placed to look into this matter of extortion and make a determination on what is the next course of action.