CAPE TOWN, July 9 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's Parliament on Tuesday called for a broader approach to combat rising crimes in the country.
Such an approach must include dealing with unemployment, poverty and the scourge of substance abuse, Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police said in a statement emailed to Xinhua.
From a policing point of view, the Police Minister and the senior management of the South African Police Service (SAPS) must move with speed to implement the promises that were made by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his recent State of the Nation Address (SONA) of increasing visibility of police officers on the streets, especially in crime hot spot areas, committee chairperson Tina Joemat-Pettersson said.
This came after 13 people, including six women, were shot dead last weekend in Philippi, a gang violence-stricken township in Cape Town in what was believed to be gang-related violence.
Such murders are symptomatic of a complex socio-economic problem that requires an urgent and multifaceted approach, Joemat-Pettersson said.
"We must be aware that this challenge is not purely a policing matter, but one that calls for active participation of all South Africans to fight crime,"Joemat-Pettersson added.
She urged the society in general to assist the police with information that will lead to the arrest and successful prosecution of the perpetrators of the Philippi murders.
The SAPS must strengthen the strategies intended to fight the proliferation of illegal guns, Joemat-Pettersson said.
The removal of illegal fire-arms that are used in committing these crimes will go a long way in dealing with this problem of murders, said Joemat-Pettersson.
She also stressed the need for strident strategies to curb gender-based violence that continues to be a worrying problem in South Africa.
The killing of the six women among the 13 people that were murdered last weekend highlights the continuation of the worrying trend of violence against women in the country, according to Joemat-Pettersson.
"Violence against women remains one of the most repugnant forms of crime in the country and cannot be left unabated," she said.
Official statistics showed that between April 2017 and April 2018, crime cases against individuals in South Africa topped 1.6 million, up 5 percent from the previous year.
Last month, President Ramaphosa called for concerted efforts nationwide to reduce the violent crime in the country at least by half in the next decade.
