Govt relying on "outdated framework" for policing: analyst
JOHANNESBURG - Gauteng Finance MEC Jacob Mamobolo plans to spend a big chunk of change on beefing up security, but this is of course a national issue.
President Cyril Ramaphosa in his parliamentary Q&A session discussed the lack of police officers countrywide.
Independent researcher David Bruce says the police needs to be strengthened and given clear mandates.
Bruce adds government seems to be relying on an outdated framework to fight the crisis.
He said: "I don't think it’s something that we can resolve over night, I think what we need is purposeful approach from government in strengthening the police to clarifying what the police can and can’t do and unfortunately in terms of the inputs that I heard from the president in response to the questions in parliament.
"I wasn't persuaded that government is actually giving serious thought to these issues, it didn’t seem at all convincing.
"It seems that government is repeatedly falling back on framework that is in many ways outdated," he said.
"There wasn’t clear evidence of real consideration being given by government to these issues about how to strengthen policing how to address these questions of trust and so on.
"The short answer that I would give is we need effective leadership around this issue from government, unfortunately I don’t see evidence of real consideration been given to the problem "