Acting Minister of Police Firoz Cachalia says South Africa’s law enforcement agencies do not deal with criminality on the basis of nationality.
Addressing a media briefing in Pretoria, Cachalia says that everyone in the country is treated equally before the law.
He was a part of the Inter-Ministerial Committee that briefed the media on government’s five-point plan to deal with issues of immigration.
Cachalia says South Africa needs to have a dialogue with other nations about immigration, adding that foreign nationals must be in the country legally.
“We have a problem of criminality, just like your country, we don’t look at the nationality of the victim. So, I think that insinuation was improper.”
Meanwhile, Cachalia has defended government’s R600 million spend to support security operations during protests on the 30th of June against undocumented foreign nationals.
This as government has been criticised in some quarters for the amount that was spent in a single day.
Cachalia says law enforcement is costly.
“Law enforcement costs money. That was the point I was making to the country. Our first responsibility in the build-up to June the 30th was to make it very clear that we will not have a repeat of July 2021 because we are all aware of the costs. When you have a special operation, which is what happened on June the 30th and we saw sporadic incidents of violence that threatened to get out of hand, you have to call up reservists, you have to pay overtime. You have to accommodate police officers across the country. We don’t have accommodation facilities across the country,” adds Cachalia.
-Additional reporting by Kholofelo Teffo
