Police Minister Bheki Cele hits back at Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis

Cape Town - Police Minister Bheki Cele has hit back at Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis for calling for his dismissal, following the release of the latest quarterly crime statistics on Friday.

“Hill-Lewis is being sent by the DA. Tell the DA to go and fire its own people. I am not employed by them, they are too fly. They should not be too fly. Every top 30 police stations, most of which are in the Western Cape and Gauteng, get extra money to give them an extra edge financially. The last time we took trainees was 2019 and in the whole country, we recruited 5000 of them, and 1200 trainees were brought back to this province and the rest of the country shared the 3800 trainees. You can not tell me that we are not giving extra effort in this province and indeed pushing down the murder and rape cases would be the best thing to do and we work hard to make sure that it happens,” said Cele.

Hill-Lewis had joined Premier Alan Winde in calling for Cele to be fired from his position, saying while The Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP) officers had made impressive progress in reducing crime in many hotspots around Cape Town, it was clear that they could not do it alone.

“Hard-working police officers in this province desperately need additional resources and support from the national government. More officers, and especially more detectives, are needed to up the conviction rate and keep criminals off the streets. Given his track record to date, we do not have confidence in Minister Cele to deliver this. He needs to go,” said Hill-Lewis.

Cape Times