Mbalula visits the country’s murder capital

A day after Police Minister Fikile Mbalula presented his budget vote in Parliament he visited the country's murder capital‚ Cape Town’s Nyanga township.

The media was invited and the Nyanga community members informed. By midday on Wednesday the community were waiting in line for a plastic bag with two apples and a bottle of water.

Mbalula's team assured that he would make an appearance and would‚ as promised‚ "address concerns".

While hundreds of people waited in the main hall of the Nyanga Sports Centre for Mbalula‚ police lined up outside ready to accompany the minister to "operations at hot spots".

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Mbalula was in a stakeholder engagement. At the meeting stakeholders were asked not just to lay their complaints but to come with solutions.

Nyanga has for years had the highest murder rate in the country according to officials police statistics. But the community had no answers for their troubled area.

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A Community Policing Forum chairman asked the minister and his panel of colleagues - including the deputy police minister - whether they could use the R200 million which would have been used to build a new state of the art police station in Muizenberg to build another station in Nyanga.

Complaints‚ from the likes of local councillors and neighbourhood watch organisations‚ ranged from police incompetence to understaffing.

TMG Digital/TimesLIVE