Leading figures in Durban and the province of KwaZulu-Natal were doing their best on Monday to limit damage to the city’s image following the rape of a French swimming official.
As Durban’s mayor Obed Mlaba and KwaZulu-Natal’s provincial minister for transport, community safety and liaison Bheki Cele staged a walkabout on the city’s beach promenade on Monday morning, local newspaper posters told of the French woman’s ordeal. Another newspaper reflected a call by diplomats to have the beaches ”sanitised”.
Cele promised that he would meet with the South African Police Service (SAPS) to ”enhance preventative measures”.
Cele said socio-economic problems needed to be tackled to deal with the numerous homeless people residing in Durban’s beach-front areas.
The four youths involved in last Tuesday night’s attack on the French woman and her Belgian companion were homeless and living on the streets of Durban. Residents living along Durban’s Golden Mile have long complained of vagrants sleeping in their doorways.
”This is not a justification of the things that have happened,” he added.
City manager Mike Sutcliffe said: ”We can’t just pick up these people and dump them somewhere else. This is a constitutional democracy.”
He said that the eThekwini metro police will be boosted in the near future by the further deployment of 250 officers.
He said had the attack not occurred on the city’s beach front it, ”it would have been barely noticed by the local media”.
Sutcliffe challenged businesses to axe their security companies if there was not a visible reduction in crime.
”Part of their [the security company’s] performance should be a reduction in crime.”
He said a high crime rate was in the security companies’ interest and profitability.
He said he would like to see a more ”integrated” approach involving police, security firms and businesses in dealing with crime.
Belgian Consul Raymond Nazar told the Daily News that Durban’s beaches should be permanently safe and not only cleaned up for big events.
It quoted him as saying: ”They can sanitise the area [have a big police presence] when it suits them and this keeps [criminal] incidents down to a strict minimum. We must have this attitude on an ongoing basis and not an ad hoc basis.”
Nazar is the chairperson of the 14-strong European Union consular corps in the city.
Mayor Mlaba said he would be meeting with the East Coast chairperson of the Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa following reports in the weekend media that tour operators are threatening to pull out of the city if the crime levels on the beaches are not tackled.
Mlaba said: ”It is an international facility and we want to protect that tradition and that history.”
He urged residents to ”be the eyes and ears of the police”. — Sapa