Madam Chair, we can't go on like this. We cannot go on as a nation listening to Nancy Richards on SAfm telling of a woman who gave birth a month ago as a result of rape, only to be dragged from her home last week and gang-raped, only to run in terror searching for a good Samaritan, and find one who dried her tears, calmed her, gave her water, and who then dragged her into the bush where she was raped again.
Everyone in this Chamber is fully cognisant of the crime in South Africa. We are not a nation of children looking for a nanny state to tell us only as much as it thinks we should be allowed to hear. I confess that the new Minister's decision to renege on his predecessor's assertion that crime statistics would be released twice annually startled even me. The Minister in fact told me on a televised debate that if he had his way we would only be informed of the status of crime once every second year. Now we will have to wait until September before he releases the statistics, which will by then be 18 months out of date. Hardly a reflection of the cold, hard reality of crime we are experiencing today.
It's understandable that the ANC wanted to keep the country in the dark in relation to the statistics before the election. That would hardly have improved their failed attempt at reaching a two-thirds majority, but to wait until September is utterly unacceptable. Without statistics, without the knowledge of the criminal mind they give us, we have taken the fight against crime back into the Dark Ages.
Two years ago I knew with certainty that 52 of us were being murdered every day, 365 days a year. Today I have no idea, is it 60 a day or is it 100 perhaps? You are well protected by your bodyguards, Minister, as are your Cabinet colleagues, and R1 million a month is spent on protecting the President, but the rest of the citizens of South Africa have an absolute right to know just how bad the situation is, where the worst crimes are perpetrated, and to be informed to the nth degree so that they may make every attempt to protect themselves and their families, because it certainly is the case that the SAPS is unable to do it for them.
Every expert in this country will tell you that updated and accurate information on crime is an essential tool in fighting crime and creating real and local responses. Covering up crime won't make crime go away, Minister, and no one asked you to protect us from the truth.
What we need are crime statistics updated continuously, using a real-time crime information system. We need information that is available to any member of the public via a real-time Internet crime database visible at their local police station which would allow for detailed data analysis. Weekly reports generated by the system could be used by the SAPS to develop specific responses to localised problems, and the database should be integrated with statistics generated by the Departments of Justice and of Correctional Services.
Sadly, from the world without bodyguards, the truth is that we spend every last cent at our disposal on people other than the police to keep our families safe, paying R40 billion a year for something our taxes should already provide. The reason? On the streets there are great swathes of citizens who no longer trust men or women in uniform.
I know the government understands this, because 18 national departments spent a total of R431 million on private security a year ago.
What we do know is that there were over 6 000 complaints against members of the SAPS this past year and 2 772 of those were for criminal activities. That equals eight police officials doing crime each and every day. In addition, to date R90 million has been spent on suspended SAPS members on full pay, covering nearly 13 000 working days in total. We know that there are police stations that are in a pitiful state of repair, and we know that minutes after the SAPS top structure informed us here in Parliament a week ago that there were no more equipment shortages, that SAPS members were inundating us with tales of how it was that they had no equipment at all.
What I do know is that the latest Global Peace Index survey placed South Africa 123 out of 144 countries. We are seven places down on our position last year. Clearly, the ongoing deterioration of the crime problem in South Africa warrants a decisive new approach.
Having a look at what we spend just some of this R46 billion budget on, there are the enormously expensive 10111 call centres - with R600 million spent in Gauteng - alone, that we call in vain, for no one to come. Having completed the report we requested, the Auditor-General stated that there are serious inadequacies in the provision of the most basic of police services. About 79% of the calls made to the 10111 centres are abandoned and now two of those were mine, two of those were my deputy's. We're still waiting for someone to respond from the SAPS.
To a certain extent, Minister, you are following in your predecessor's shoes. He attempted to hide the truth from us, as you're hiding the statistics from us. He hid away the damning 400-page, R7,5 million report on the dysfunctionality of the police Legal Services Division, run by a woman who, the report claims, has "a fundamental misunderstanding of the law and legal processes". It is under this Lindiwe Mthimkhulu's leadership that the SAPS ran up legal bills of R46 million in 2006-07 - twice the amount paid out in settlements. Yet another result of the ANC's failed cadre deployment policy, and one which this country is praying today will not land us with another dysfunctional National Police Commissioner. Just a suggestion here, Minister: Why not hire someone who is actually qualified to do the job? Certainly some of the budget will go to the new unit.
I understand completely that the ANC had no option but to go ahead and destroy the most successful crime-fighting unit this country has ever known - the Scorpions - with their 94% conviction rate, because of the number of ANC bigwigs and parliamentarians who ended up in court because of them. Now we have the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, Dpci, tucked safely away under the Minister's arm and we have no one left to police the police, let alone investigate the next Jackie Selebi or Tony Yengeni.
The morale of our SAPS members is at an all-time low as they hear of the cases against their rudderless colleagues who have been convicted of murder, armed robbery and rape, while they're stuck behind desks pushing papers aimed at criminalising the honest firearm owners in our society. That legislation the court has now inevitably put on ice awaiting the results of a Constitutional Court challenge. The DA said that the firearm legislation would be an extremely expensive failure, and it has been.
Legal gun owners fumed at the hoops they had to jump through to get a new, improved, expensive gun licence when they already owned one, while at the same time one clue as to how our criminals have become so heavily armed comes via the information that police somehow lost 2 500 weapons last year. And that, added to municipal losses, means that 3 767 weapons are now in the hands of the criminals.
The fact is, since 2001 over 1 400 weapons have been lost or stolen from police stations, and so of course they chose to turn and focus on the rest of us; and, if, in the unlikely event that the criminals are caught - that's an 11% chance if they murder someone, an 8% chance if they rob a house, and a 7% chance if they steal a car - they'll have a long holiday out on bail, because the forensic science laboratories are still in chaos. Even though, in the latest data from the Minister he admits that backlogs in forensic science laboratories are up by 93% since June 2007, we have been reliably informed that these figures significantly understate the reality of the situation and that total backlogs are in fact roughly double that which the Minister claimed it is they are.
The backlogs in the Western Cape alone stand at approximately 18 000 samples, while he says they stand at 11 000 nationwide. Another query for the Minister would be why it is that so few police are able to write dockets correctly when we spend so much on training, and why it is that there are 5 200 SAPS members, as revealed in the Scopa hearing two hours ago, who do not have driving licences. The docket situation may not be so serious in that they're often lost anyway. The number of lost dockets has increased every year since 2003, and totals over 2 500. Perhaps e-dockets would be more secure, I don't know. But seriously, an SAPS member who can't drive?
That brings me to statements made by the new Deputy Minister of Police, Fikile Mbalula, who believes that unemployed youths, armed with torches, should be sent out to patrol the streets with a public relations certificate for protection. Now, at present, the Police Service remains hamstrung by the poor quality of its training programmes, and most new recruits never come close to reaching their full potential as officers, because they never receive the kind of tuition and guidance they deserve. Now, sorting out the myriad existing problems inside the SAPS may be less glamorous than announcing flashy new programmes, but this really should be where the Deputy Minister's focus lies. There really is no need to proffer teenagers as cannon fodder.
One of the most worrying aspects of this budget is the fact that it has to meet the extraordinary amounts to be paid out to civilians who were abused by the police. The truth is that there are police in South Africa today who are convicted of murder, rape, grievous bodily harm, assault and of course beating ill pensioners to death in the cells, putting women in male cells to be gang-raped, or throwing innocent men into a cell to be gang-raped all night while the officer slept at the front desk. Almost one fifth of the budget was lost to these totally preventable errors of judgment on the part of the police.
Why are we failing in our training? We're all watching as scores of new recruits are taken into the SAPS and such is the psychometric testing that a gang of these new students near Port Elizabeth used their vehicle to ram a car off the road, and proceeded to pillage the broken civilians lying scattered around their wreck. The latest Auditor-General report reveals that SAPS members hardly receive training anyway. How is that possible, and are we actually paying for the sort of training centres that allow people like these into the service?
Another of the areas of concern is the fact that the Ministry has failed to reverse Jackie Selebi's disastrous destruction of the specialised units, and I do welcome the comments you have made here today on that matter. It would be the totally discredited National Police Commissioner that I am referring to, who has been on full pay for nearly two years, and whose contract was yesterday extended for a month, so he'll receive yet another R93 000 for July and then what, Minister? Is he the one who is going to be reinstated? We don't need dithering here, we need a clear explanation of why you've kept him on for another month past the expiration of his contract, on top of paying him nearly R2 million to sit at home.
A top priority should be to appoint a new commissioner, as well as to fill various vacancies in senior posts that hinder the department's ability to function. It was Selebi who decided to close down all specialised units and, as I said, we really do welcome your remarks today in relation with the units and we agree, and we have been saying for years that we need to bring them back. The expertise is scattered and no longer utilised. Indeed, if we actually had viable crime statistics in front of us to scrutinise, we'd be able to determine for ourselves the results of this decision.
I use the word "viable", because of the endless reports I've received over the years that stations are understating crime statistics so that they may receive a pat on the back. Ask the country's new community safety minister in the Western Cape, Lennit Max. You can't keep the statistics from the DA in this province any more, so that can of worms is now well and truly open, and the news is out that at least 500 crimes in this province may not have been investigated, with 56 rapes not registered.
Now that you've shut down the Scorpions, the only unit left that could investigate police corruption would be the Independent Complaints Directorate, ICD. Unfortunately when the ICD investigates, the SAPS mostly ignores its suggestions.
This House has a moral obligation to strengthen the ICD, which has been very deliberately kept underresourced. Thank you to the new chairperson for raising that. A week ago the Minister stated on television that he was strengthening this unit, but the ICD promptly came before the portfolio committee and revealed that R3 million had been summarily subtracted from their budget. Who do we believe? Do we believe the ICD and the Treasury or the Minister? The fact is that there is no separate budget today and that it is a crying shame. Their Vote should be a separate budget. As an interim measure I have submitted a private member's legislative proposal, the purpose of which is to empower the ICD by forcing the SAPS to do their job. So, it's going to be most interesting to see the reaction of the various committees to this proposal. Just yesterday, I was contacted by a man whose son was, according to an ICD report, shot dead by a SAPS member. That was nine years ago, and the member is still on active duty, and the evidence is disappearing piece by piece.
About the borders, Minister, you might want to speak with the Minister of Home Affairs and read the 2008 World Drug Report, which paints a damning picture of drug problems. We produce 28% of all of the cannabis produced in Africa. The solution is that we must reinstate the SAPS Narcotics Bureau, which was disbanded by Selebi of course, and of course illegal narcotics must be prevented from entering and exiting the country.
In closing, I want to thank, from the bottom of my heart, those brave men and women of the SAPS who work tirelessly to keep us safe. They do a spectacular job, despite an almost total vacuum in leadership. What is sad, is that when they retire, they will probably be denied their pensions for up to three full years, and have their houses attached. Currently, 2 000 former SAPS members are in that position. Is there anything new in this budget - apart from the fact that the second largest increase goes to protection services for the so-called VIPs? The answer is no. Do you imagine that the DA is going to support this budget? [Time expired.]