Chris Steyn (00:01.066)

Veteran crime fighter and chairperson of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police, Ian Cameron, has launched a 30-day campaign to expose convicted sexual offenders. He's with me now. Welcome Ian.

Ian Cameron (00:17.956)

Good morning, Chris.

Chris Steyn (00:21.026)

What has inspired you to take this drastic step?

Ian Cameron (00:26.01)

So Chris, over the last few weeks, I mean we've all seen the onslaught with regards to especially women and children, and a lot of people very often say, but what about men as well? And there's an element of truth to it, I must say, when you look at numbers, and I'll come back to the campaign now and the reasoning behind it.

But if you go look at the numbers nationally and you see that we have about sixty murders per day, and about nine or ten of those sixty are women or female victims. It's a stark contrast. The big thing that we need to take into consideration is that if you look at the latest Stats SA report, the victim crime impact survey, it gives a very clear indication that over 60% of female victims actually knew the perpetrator. So the large majority of these types of cases or incidents happen behind closed doors. And I think it's very important that men step up and say that we have got a responsibility as men to be protectors and not the attackers or the assailants. It's horrific to see that many men still joke or even laugh about domestic violence for example and I think we need to make a much, much stronger stand against that.

So why such a drastic statement? You would know that before in my more NGO years, we made the same or I made the same statements. And I think it's critical for us to say that the Sexual Offences Register needs to be public.

This morning I posted the face of Nicholas Ninow. You remember when he was caught raping a little girl inside a renowned Gauteng restaurant in the bathroom. Now all sorts of excuses we heard afterwards. The long and the short of it is there needs to be something extremely wrong with you if you could in any way do something as horrific as that.

Ian Cameron (02:45.896)

I think of the case of little Bokgabo Poo. Up until now we haven't seen a conviction directly for that specific case. But the accused that was later acquitted, eventually received a life sentence for a different matter where he he also raped someone.

And so I've decided that if they won't make the National Register for Sex Offenders public, then we'll do it ourselves. Then we'll start releasing the names and the faces of people.

And remember, there's nothing wrong with me speaking about someone that's already been convicted, that's already had his or her face put in the media.

I think of the mother and her boyfriend of Chevonne Rusch in Gauteng. That two-year-old little girl had nearly fifty blunt force bruisings on her body when the post mortem was done. Now, people like that need to be removed from society permanently and they should never have the opportunity to get bail.

And I think the onslaught on women and children has become so severe that we need to take more severe precautions. They should not have the rights that they so often deserve or not deserve, that they so often enjoy, sorry, and we need to make sure that they actually have real consequences.

Chris Steyn (04:08.942)

Ian, I saw somewhere that there are thirty two thousand names on the Sexual Offenders Register. Are those only the rapists of children and disabled people? What category of rapist goes on there?

Ian Cameron (04:23.548)

So that's anyone that's been convicted of sexual offenses. Now obviously that number is severely or significantly higher than thirty two thousand. The point is that from what I recall, and we'll now go into the process of questioning a lot of this, from what I recall at one stage the register itself only had two or three people that permanently worked on updating it. Now, it's physically impossible with the amount of these types of offences that we have, the amount of convicted felons that we have for sexual offences, that the number remains that low.

If it's something again that the President claims to take seriously, that could have been one of the quick fixes that he could have that he could have announced during his speech the other day.

And I wanna give you a few examples. I've just opened it in front of me. Do you want to say something?

Chris Steyn (05:15.202)

No, I just wanted to ask you what is behind these delays to get it public.

Ian Cameron (05:22.269)

Sure. So I you know, we've even heard the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development indicating that it would be good if it's public and he understands the frustration.

What frustrates me is I don't see urgency with regards to making it public. And I think as we tell the stories of victims so that they don't become just numbers or statistics, we should tell the stories of the offenders as well. And when I say tell the stories, it's not for sympathy or empathy. It is to show people who we need to protect innocent victims from.

Remember that I, for example, went the last few days and I just did a random sample of the last few years of ten offenders, okay? And out of those ten alone, I was able to find a hundred and thirteen rape convictions. Just out of ten people, okay, that included twelve murder convictions as well and sixty-seven life sentences.That's just from ten offenders.

Now imagine if we had to go and look at the thirty two thousand number that the register contains, which should be much higher. If we had to go and look at everything they had been convicted for, the damage that those people have caused, especially to children, irreparable harm that they've caused to children over such a long time period, why should we be handling them with gloves? I just think it's absolutely unacceptable.

One example that I want to share with you, Chris, is the story of Nkosinathi Phakathi. Now, Nkosinathi was convicted of ninety counts of rape. Ninety counts of rape. Those are only the ones that he was convicted for. Now, what kind of person like that deserves at any stage to be given an opportunity in society? I'm sorry, I just cannot allow that to be justified or normalised.

I think of another example, Mortimer Saunders was convicted of raping and murdering three-year-old Courtney Pieters. Same thing. How do you justify doing something horrific like that?

I mentioned Nicholas Ninow with a seven-year-old…

And so the list goes on. I just think it's important that we speak about this because I believe that too often these types of offenders enjoy luxuries and comforts that the families of those victims and the victims who may have survived will never enjoy again.

Chris Steyn (08:05.602)

Ian, what's your hashtag for your revelations, your list?

Ian Cameron (08:11.011)

Well, the idea was just that I wanna start sharing the story. It wasn't actually planned as some kind of a campaign. It was more that we need to start speaking about # OpenTheRegister.

And the idea is that the public starts realising that there are a huge amount of people that or is a huge amount of people involved behind a lot of these incidents.

You know, the perception very often when you just look at the numbers, you don't realise what the ripple impact is of these types of offences. Now, let me tell you, if you've got someone like Nkosinathi Phakathi and and you've got that amount of rape convictions, you can imagine what an extremely negative, almost sadistic impact that individual had on on society and specifically on the people that he did that to, imagine what impact that trauma has had on their direct family members and loved ones.

So #OpenTheRegister is an opportunity for all of us to start saying up to here no further. We can't speak about prioritising it, but there's no urgency in really acting. If it is later found that there's a reason to reconsider something, by all means that discussion can be held. But for now we need urgent, drastic measures to push back on these types of offences.

It is because of one of the reasons, it's not only social issues or socioeconomic issues and so on that often get used as excuses. It is very often because they don't see the consequences that they deserve. Remember, I've given some of the ones that have seen strong convictions, but the large majority don't even see the inside of a courtroom. So these are only the ones that have been convicted. We need to ensure that there are consequences to fear.

Chris Steyn (10:08.768)

Indeed, Ian, I just want to go to breaking news. A close relative of sacked deputy Crime Intelligence chief General Feroz Khan, being gunned down on the R21 in Boksburg last night. Apparently he had received threats and he was also at the first appearance of General Khan and General Ibrahim Kadwa, the court appearance. What can you tell us?

Ian Cameron (10:34.603)

Yeah, so for all practical purposes in my mind, Khan has been dismissed from the South African Police Service until stated otherwise by a court. So I will just call him Mr. Khan. I must say that you know, first the investigation needs to indicate to us whether it has any kind of a link to the Madlanga Commission or to Mr. Khan himself. It's very important as well that if that is the case, the relevant investigation has to take place to give us more detail.

I think something that needs to be noted from this and a lot of the previous bloodshed that has been seen, whether allegedly targeted against someone like Khan or anyone else for that matter that has been mentioned or brought to testify at the Madlanga Commission shows us what deep dark pit of of underworld mess this whole thing is. It shows us as well how and whether directly, indirectly or even intentionally or unintentionally, connected some of our senior police members may sometimes be to the organised crime underworld.

Remember assassinations of these kinds - and this looks like a hit - if it is indicated as such, it is a fact in most cases that assassinations usually form part of a bigger organised crime struggle and South Africa has unfortunately become renowned to be one of the strongest organised crime hubs globally as we know it.

Chris Steyn (12:25.166)

I saw reported that there’s a SAPS report with a recommendation that former police minister Bheki Cele should be criminally charged for allegedly receiving money from tenderpreneur and attempted murder accused Cat Matkala and free accommodation.

Ian Cameron (12:42.227)

Yeah, so I've also read a little bit about it and thought about it a bit. I think the relevant investigation, similar to what I just said, needs to take its course.

But something I can say, the biggest problem to me isn't the one individual investigation. It's the fact that someone like this was allowed to become the Police Minister, someone that knowingly, while being the Police Minister, didn't have a problem associating with someone like Matlala.

That brings us to a bigger question. Why was he selected as a minister? Who selected him? Why did the Presidency support it? And so the list goes on.

A lot of the mess that we're currently in happened during the tenure of Cele as the Minister of Police. And there's no secret that a lot of senior positions, even mid management positions in the South African Police Service, were later given to certain individuals that Mr Cele had to or felt obliged to arrange jobs for because he knew he wasn't going to return as minister.

So it's very important that this isn't just an individual type of investigation, but that it also considers the broader surrounds of former Minister Cele and what broader impact it may have had. Also which other individuals were involved in this. It's very easy to choose one scapegoat, and I'm the last one to come up for Cele, but there's no way that he did everything on his own.

Chris Steyn (14:17.27)

Ian, apart from this campaign, what is your other biggest priority going forward now?

Ian Cameron (14:22.856)

Chris, maybe maybe just to mention, you know, we are in the process of budget reviews and the medium term budget process. In the coming few days we'll be spending time with budget reviews with the police …The Hawks.. the Police Civilian Secretariat. So quite intensive discussions regarding that.

What we learned last week from the Auditor General as well as the internal audit department of the South African Police Service was that the police spent just over a hundred percent of their budget, but hardly reached fifty percent of its targets. So the bigger question that I actually asked when speaking to you not too long ago was, Are we seeing return on investment? And we know what the answer to that is. Sixty people being murdered a day equals a big fat no.

And you know, yes, there are minor improvements in certain areas, but if we go look at that survey done by Stats SA, it also shows us that yes, while we see certain statistics decreasing in terms of police stats, we see massive decreases in actual reporting of crime. So it is not accurate to say that we are experiencing much of a decline.

There are certain acknowledgments that need to be made and welcomed, but we're not at a point where we can celebrate anything yet. The amount of murders, rapes and and just contact crimes that are being reported are extremely alarming. And this budget process will give us an opportunity to scrutinize those targets. And also I am of the firm view that the police do not need more money. We very often hear this money excuse and a lack of resources, but why should I give someone more money if they are not good custodians of that money. Cat Natlala in the Medicare contract says more than enough.

Chris Steyn (16:24.11)

Indeed, thank you. That was Ian Cameron, Parliament Portfolios Committee on Police's chairperson speaking to BizNews. I'm Chris Steyn. Thank you, Ian.

Ian Cameron (16:34.051)

Thanks, Chris.

Ian Cameron: "The deep, dark pit of underworld mess"