Premier Nomvula Paula Mokonyane

Nomvula Paula Mokonyane Premier's Office Tel:  011 355-6000 30 Simmonds Street Johannesburg

Nomvula Paula Mokonyane

Nomvula Paula Mokonyane, daughter of the late Mr. & Mrs. Mkhize, was born on 28 June 1963 in West Rand township of Kagiso. She is the youngest in a family of 12 – six sisters and five brothers.

Mokonyane is a married mother of three - two sons and a daughter, a Catholic and an active member of the social networking club.

Mokonyane has participated actively in the struggle against apartheid from an early age of 15. She is a founder member of COSAS (Congress of South African Students), a former member and organiser of the Federation of Transvaal Women (UDF affiliate), former activist and leader of the Civic Movement (Kagiso Residents Organisation) and former shop-steward and leader of CCAWUSA (now SACCAWU).
During this period, she was continuously harassed and detained by the apartheid security police. 

Since the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994, Mokonyane has continued to serve in different leadership capacities in the ANC and its Alliance structures, including as a member of the Central Committee of the SACP, NEC member of the ANCWL and NEC member of the ANC. She is currently the Deputy Chairperson of the ANC in Gauteng.

She has been part of the ANC cadres who became public representatives in 1994 and served in the Gauteng Legislature in various Portfolio Committees before she was appointed an MEC of Agriculture and Environment in 1996. She became MEC for Safety and Liaison from 1999 to 2004, was appointed Housing MEC between 2004 and 2009. 

She has received training in Local Government and Planning Management and Community Development in Sweden. She completed a certificate course in Emerging Economics with the Wharton Business School at Pensylvania University and studied leadership and governance at Harvard University, both in the USA.

Mokonyane firmly believes in collective leadership and team work, which accords with the ANC’s 2009 election campaign slogan” Working together, we can do more”. 

MEC for Community Safety

Khabisi Mosunkutu 011 689-3600 Standard Bank Building, 78 Fox Street, Johannesburg

Khabisi Mosunkutu

Born 59 years ago, Khabisi Mosunkutu moved to Gauteng at an early age and matriculated from Musi High School in Soweto in 1970. He had always been fascinated by maths and physics and after a stint at motor manufacturing and laboratory equipment companies, he became before one of the first Telkom recruits to be trained as a telephone mechanic.

Around 1977 Mosunkutu and several colleagues initiated the establishment of a union within Telkom – then euphemistically called a “liaison structure”. In 1981 he was detained together with four other comrades and subjected to solitary confinement and the notorious interrogation methods in terms of Section 6 of the Act against Terrorism.

At the time of the United Democratic Front’s groundbreaking initiatives, Mosunkutu joined the Soweto Civic Association, a “very powerful base for mass mobilisation and political schooling”.

By 1986, the Post and Telecommunications Workers Union (Potwa) was formally launched, with Mosunkutu as its first secretary. It became the biggest of the four associations in the sector and one of the affiliated unions in Cosatu.

Later posts included deputy president of the UDF in Southern Transvaal. During a further period of solitary confinement, Mosunkutu was elected president of Potwa. He was an Executive Member of the Soweto Civic Association and the Reception Committee during preparations for the release of the national leadership, including the release of Walter Sisulu, Elias Motsoaledi, Edward Mlangeni, Raymond Mhlaba and Ahmed Kathrada. He recalls the “incredible sight” of Madiba emerging from Victor Verster Prison and the “pure magic” of shaking his hand for the first time at a much later occasion.

Selected to Parliament, Mosunkutu served on the Post and Telecommunications, Labour, Housing and Trade and Industry committees. At Gauteng Legislature in 1995, he chaired the Public Transport: Roads and Works Committee until his appointment as MEC for that portfolio in 1999. The following four years were dominated by plans for the Gautrain and an extended period of taxi violence during which Mosunkutu played a pivotal role in reducing the power of the taxi “warlords”.

In 2004, he was appointed MEC for Agriculture, Conservation and Environment, where he maintained a commitment to “finding a balance between the environment and development” and to effective management of sustainable resources.

He is currently reviewing his course in economics with the London School of Economics.

For the man who does not have the word “impossible” in his vocabulary, science is still a large interest, and he reads all he can on the subject. The remainder of any spare time he has is devoted to watching soccer and being with his three adult children and one teenager.

Mosunkutu has one dream that he is determined to make reality – to shake the hand of theoretical physicist Professor Stephen Hawking.

Gauteng Strategy for Tackling Crime

Following the recent initiative taken by the National Minister of Safety and Security, I together with the Members of the Mayoral Committees responsible for Public Safety at local government and Senior Management of the South African Police Service and the Metropolitan Police Departments would like to announce the following strategy to strengthen our fight against crime in Gauteng. This strategy will start to take effect immediately and will be continued over the next six months.

The following measures will form part of the strategy to heighten police visibility and impact on crime in throughout Gauteng:

There will be increased police visibility through among other measures, the strengthening of sector policing throughout the province. Furthermore, plans are in place to double the number of police reservists in Gauteng.

The police will be improving their response to specific crimes in particular areas. This will include where necessary, refining the modus operandi of the police to ensure targeted and proactive responses to particular crimes.

The police will be increasing the numbers of road blocks being held throughout the province to disrupt criminal activity and to improve safety on the roads.

There will be increased efforts to track down and bring the most wanted criminals in Gauteng to justice.

Efforts to remove illegal firearms from our communities will be stepped up. The numbers of firearms that have been confiscated and destroyed will be announced to the public.

Concerns have been raised about the 10111 call centres. Currently there are six 10111 call centres in the province that each receive an average of 80 000 calls per month. As much as 30 percent of these calls are hoax calls that clog the system and slow down response times.  Steps are in the process to improve the functioning of the 10111 call centres through centralising this service. Construction of the new central 10111 Call Centre is currently underway. In the meantime a training programme has been started to improve the skills of call operators and supervision is being enhanced through the deployment of senior commanders.

To improve safety on our railways, steps have already been taken to deploy reservists on the trains. This initiative has already started to show results.

Further, measures will be taken to improve the relationship between the police and the community. This will include measures to encourage people to join Community Policing Forums (CPFs), to report crime to the police and join the police reservists.
Alongside the above measures, police attention will be directed at reducing the following crimes: 

We will be monitoring the roll-out of this strategy on a regular basis to determine its impact on the above mentioned crimes and overall community safety in the province.

While the above strategy seeks to achieve an immediate reduction in crime in Gauteng primarily through policing, we are also in the process of finalising a long-terms strategy for sustained and substantial reduction in violent in the lead up to 2010. We will be presenting the Gauteng Safety Strategy to the Gauteng Provincial Executive at their next meeting.

The Gauteng Safety Strategy will include a number of key pillars to improve the quality of policing in Gauteng over the longer term and to strengthen the social crime prevention capacity of provincial and local government.

A particular pillar is to dramatically increase the contribution of all sectors of society in the fight against crime. To achieve this we will launch a ‘Social Movement against Crime' in Gauteng. This movement will increase awareness and also seek to change attitudes in a manner that empowers ordinary people to take action to improve the safety of their community. 

It is important to highlight that we all have a role to play to reduce crime in our province.  No matter where we live or what our backgrounds are, criminals are our common enemy. We cannot allow those who harm our communities to get away with impunity.  They are a minority and can be stopped. Each one of us can do more to support effective and accountable policing by providing information about criminal activity or joining our Community Police Forums and the police reservists.

Issued by: Department of Community Safety in Gauteng

For more information contact:   Phumla Sekhonyane on (011) 689 3633 / 082 909 3708