CAPE TOWN - KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi said tackling the country’s gang problem requires authorities to look beyond the guns, stolen vehicles and violent turf wars.
He said the key lies in understanding the criminal network itself.
Mkhwanazi was speaking in Parliament on Wednesday during a summit aimed at addressing gang-related violence.
The summit brought together victims of gang-related violence, civil society organisations, community-based organisations and individuals working daily to combat gang violence.
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According to Mkhwanazi, gangs should not be viewed as one uniform group; instead, their identity and methods differ depending on where they operate.
Mkhwanazi drew his attention to the Western Cape, where he named three groups: gangs in coloured townships, emerging gangs in black townships and foreign gangs often found to be operating in suburban areas and considered sophisticated.
“These are all the gangs that are contributing to the problems that we have in the country. So we'll have to expand and get to those gangs to understand exactly what the problem is and why they do what they do.
Once authorities have established the group they are dealing with, then they can move to getting information from them.
This is where Mkhawanazi said intelligence is key.
Mkhawanazi referred to the famous idiom: 'send a thief to catch a thief.'
“We have to recruit people to get them into the criminal system so that they feed us with information.”