Gauteng crime stats: 556 protests 'about almost everything' stretched police

Gauteng police commissioner Lt-Gen Elias Mawela has likened the first quarter of the year to a “season of discontent” featuring 556 protests, an escalation from the same time last year.

“During this period we have observed the escalated rate of protest actions about almost everything. For the period under review, we had a total of 556 protests that were attended to, of which 425 were peaceful while 131 incidents were of unrest.”

Mawela was presenting the fourth quarter crime statistics for the 2021/22 financial year to the provincial legislature’s portfolio committee on community safety on Tuesday.

He said a high level of dissatisfaction by “many sectors of our communities” required the redeployment of already over-stretched, limited resources from policing to the policing of protest action and gatherings.

He gave some examples:

• University students, unhappy about mandatory vaccinations, took their anger to the streets
• Rising anti-foreigner sentiments which could have easily resulted in attacks on foreign nationals if not properly mitigated and policed
• Labour strikes in the mining and food and allied sectors also brought challenges, including everyday community service delivery protests in almost all municipalities in the province.

He reported that over and above the policing of protests, during this period they had to deploy members to police 126 medium-risk major events compared to the previous period when only 39 major events were categorised as medium risk.

“That resulted in a lot of national major events being hosted in this province.”

Cable theft and damage to essential infrastructure in Gauteng added even more policing challenges.

“The SAPS is legally obliged to make resources available to police protest actions irrespective of their nature and circumstances.

“At the same time, we had to equally provide resources for the safety and security and successful hosting of major events, to prevent and combat violent crimes which were also on the rise during the ‘season of discontent’. This obviously taking advantage of many priorities for SAPS and its limited resources on the ground,” Mawela said.

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