Strategic Plan 2004/2007 | Foreword by the Commissioner

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Foreword by the National Commissioner of the South African Police Service

During the year 2000 the South African Police Service introduced a three year strategic plan based on crime information, patterns, trends and analysis. Since then the Department of Safety and Security has systematically reviewed its strategic direction against the backdrop of both historical and prevailing crime information as well as a host of other influencing factors. However, since 2000 there has not been a major change in the strategic direction embarked upon, rather a process of fine-tuning and improving upon the existing strategy on an annual basis.

This Strategic Plan addresses the key areas on which the SAPS will focus in support of Government's policy prescripts, including the strategies to achieve these policies. It is an essential tool for myself as accounting officer and my management to achieve Government's objectives to address financial management, the improving of service delivery, and to ensure that services are delivered in the most economical, effective and efficient manner. Accountability is ensured by the linking of the objectives in the Strategic Plan to the performance agreements of Management, including the cascading of these objectives through the performance enhancement process to all personnel members in the Service.

The major key to the successes we have achieved with our strategic plan to date lies in the use of an integrated approach. Within the SAPS we have methodically moved from having a variety of specialised units working in isolation, to forming teams with experts from different policing fields to tackle certain crime phenomena - such as organised crime, narcotics syndicates and vehicle hijackings. To date 288 of the former specialised units have been closed down - with the exception of those dealing with child protection and sexual offences. The detectives from these units have been redeployed to detective units and police stations where their expertise is most needed. This process is continuing. Not only is the SAPS working in this integrated fashion, but so too are government departments. All strategies and priorities of the SAPS are aligned to the goals of the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster which coordinates interdepartmental crime prevention initiatives both at Ministerial and at Directors General level. This ensures that all departments in the criminal justice system act in a coordinated manner towards the same goals.

During the period of this Strategic Plan, in fact over the next 10 years, the South African Police Service will be concentrating vigorously on reducing the levels of contact crimes by between 7% and 10% per annum. Contact crimes refer to physical contact between the victim and the perpetrator and include murder, attempted murder, rape, attempted rape, assault GBH and assault common, robbery including aggravated robbery and malicious damage to property.

These crimes account for 39,9% of the serious crime reported in this country and are considered the most important crimes to curb as they tend to directly threaten life and limb, cause trauma, negatively affect whole families, provoke vigilantism and affect the psychological profile of the population.

In order to achieve this goal of drastically reducing contact crimes, we have to continue introducing sector policing to increase the visibility of and access to police officers, particularly in poor areas where crime levels are high. In terms of the recruitment and training process which is presently underway the numbers of police members will be increased to 156 760 by the end of March 2007 which constitutes a 19,1% increase.

It is the commitment to service delivery at all levels, from National Commissioner and Deputy National/Provincial and Divisional Commissioners to the most recently trained Constable that has brought us this far and it is this commitment that must carry us through the next several years to successfully implement this strategic plan.

J S SELEBI
NATIONAL COMMISSIONER