The Gauteng Crime Prevention wardens continue to catch flak from all sides. They have been barred from performing police duties at police stations, accused of assaulting residents, and have now been blamed for the spread of crime in the neighbouring North West province.

The Chief Director of the Civilian Secretariat at the Department of Community Safety and Transport in the North West province, Mpho Maleme, has blamed the launch of the Crime Prevention Wardens project in Gauteng for increasing crime and attacks on tourists in the North West, saying the criminals have fled next door.

The wardens, referred to as amaPanyaza, are the brainchild of Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi.

Speaking at the briefing to update on safety interventions following News24's exclusive report on the hijacking of two buses carrying international tourists to tourist destinations in the province, including Sun City and Pilanesberg Game Reserve, Maleme said the province started experiencing increased crime following the launch of Crime Prevention Wardens in May.

Among the interventions announced this week was the deployment of more than 30 vehicles to accompany tour buses in the province. 

At the briefing, Maleme said:

As soon as amaPanyaza were launched, they [criminals] ran from Gauteng to North West. That is when we started having problems. [All] criminals ran away from Gauteng and came to the North West. I can tell you that all these crimes we see are committed by people from Gauteng. It's not the people of North West.

Doubling down on her assertion, Maleme highlighted a sharp increase in crime in most parts of the North West that share borders with Gauteng. She said she has been engaged in many crime imbizos as crime continues to rise in the province.

"I'm going throughout the province to try and address crime issues. We've had imbizos in Makapanstad and other areas along the R104, but I have realised that we made a mistake by not including Gauteng in our imbizos and meetings we’ve had," she said.

Sharing Maleme's sentiments was the general manager for Sun City, Brett Hoppe, who said they also believed most of the criminals followed the tourists from Gauteng, but admitted there was no evidence to support this claim.

Hoppe said they had observed the modus operandi of the criminals which usually target large groups of tourists travelling together.

"We think this is external to the province issue and that people are targeting tour coaches because they represent significant value. If you have 35 international tourists on a single occasion, with watches, typically cameras, tablets, and all, it's much more meaningful than a single vehicle," he said.

Hoppe said that working together with police and other stakeholders, they have devised countermeasures to ensure that tour buses, including some of the vehicles using major routes in the province, are protected. 

He went on to say he would not go into detail about what plans they have put in place to ensure that tourists are safe on North West roads.

This week, the Crime Prevention Wardens received the legal status of traffic officers.

In a statement, spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice and Correctional Services, Chrispin Phiri, said in June, the Gauteng Provincial government asked Justice Minister Ronald Lamola to designate the Crime Prevention Wardens as peace officers, as outlined in the Criminal Procedure Act.

Phiri said under the act,  Lamola has the authority to confer peace officer status to any person by their office, to exercise power under the Criminal Procedure Act, any offence, or any designated class of crimes.

"After conducting a thorough analysis of the applicable legal frameworks, it was determined that for the Gauteng Crime Prevention Wardens to exercise peace officer powers, they must assume the same legal status as Gauteng Provincial traffic officers.

"Provincial traffic officers currently carry out their duties within the ambit of their peace officer designation, supported by the necessary legal framework," Phiri said.