Crime in South Africa has soared under President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government, civil society and opposition parties have said, expressing their unhappiness with the president’s “lack of leadership”.
Increased horrendous crimes have occurred under Ramaphosa’s nose, including the gang-rape of and murder eight young women, instances of GBV, flourishing zama zama operations, heists and kidnapping.
Along with this, there is an ailing economy, failed SOEs, the Phala-Phala farm scandal, among other woes.
In 2012, former president Jacob Zuma fired Bheki Cele who was then police chief. However, Ramaphosa wanting to win votes from KwaZulu-Natal hired him as police minister.
After the traumatic gang-rape of eight women incident, Cele was heard saying one woman was lucky to be raped by one man instead of multiple men like the other victims.
Cele also fought with National Police Commissioner Khehla Sitole and forced him out of his post.
Advocate, activist for political and human rights, human dignity and social justice in South Africa, Mary de Haas, said South Africa lacked leadership and Cele was the crux of the problem with policing.
De Haas said Sitole tried to do a few things right, but Cele was running the police and he was still doing it, through Lieutenant-General Fannie Masemola, whom he worked with in KZN.
“You need a political will, because the president has had that report from state security intelligence, and he's done nothing about it. The other problem is there's inadequate prosecutorial oversight of the police and a lot of the time, unfortunately, the prosecution is complicit with corrupt policemen,” said De Haas.
She further said: “You need a political will to tackle organised crime… like the Scorpions who were independent from the police. I mean, there were problems with the Scorpions, (but) they were in the process of being sorted out when they were done away with.
“You need a different minister who is not engaging operationally. You need properly trained police. The other thing is, the wrong people are appointed to management.
“The first thing we need is an audit to verify qualifications, because the appointments/promotions are done on the basis of nepotism… who you're related to, who you're recruiting of in the corruption networks. And good police are suffering,” said De Haas
ATM president Vuyo Zungula said it was very sad when the media was an active participant in shielding Ramaphosa from “rogue activities”.
“The reason we have all this lawlessness is because the head of state is embroiled in criminality with impunity,” Zungula said.
Former head of state security Arthur Fraser opened a case at Rosebank police station after Ramaphosa allegedly failed to report a robbery at his farm where an undisclosed amount in American dollars was stolen.
Ramaphosa confirmed that there was indeed a robbery at his Phala Phala farm in Bela-Bela, Limpopo, on February 9, 2020.
Zungula said: “Fraser has substantiated the criminality, as alleged, but even today the Hawks and the investigating arm of the NPA are afraid of pronouncing that Ramaphosa is under investigation.”
“Ramaphosa's presence in government exacerbates crime, because law enforcers don't find it ethical to arrest common criminals when the head of state is immune to the law. By now the Hawks and Investigating arm of the NPA should have long descended on Phala Phala Farm,” Zungula said.
FF Plus leader Dr Pieter Groenewald expressed the party’s unhappiness with Ramaphosa’s leadership.
“The core of the matter is that Ramaphosa wants to be everything for everyone and in the end is nothing to nobody. He wants to please each and everyone, he wants to survive in the ANC. He is on record where he said that he will do everything and the most important matter is the ANC.
“And it doesn't matter what he says. The fact is that he puts the interests of the ANC above the interests of South Africa,” Groenewald said.
He said everybody thought that Ramaphosa would save the economy and create jobs.
“We are struggling from one conference to another summit on job creation. Unemployment is increasing. If you look at the young people, between 18 and 29 years, we talk about 60% unemployment,” he said.
Groenewald said another good example was that after 2014, when Zuma was at the helm, he appointed Ramaphosa as deputy president to start a “war room” at Eskom to ensure that there would be no loadshedding.
“The fact of the matter is that Ramaphosa did nothing. I asked him in Parliament why he was not successful. He said, well, he couldn’t make any progress and then he actually ended this war room. If he did his job, then it would have been a different story,” Groenewald said
ANC veteran Dr Mavuso Msimang, in an interview with SABC this week, said Ramaphosa’s five years at the helm of the governing party had been dismal.
Msimang further said that the bar was very low when you get people who have been fingered in scandals wanting to to be the president of the ANC.
Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, was contacted for comment but failed to respond.