Quinton Mtyala
NATIONAL police commissioner General Bheki Cele was forced to retract comments regarded as xenophobic at a breakfast meeting of officers in Khayelitsha yesterday.
Later he called on police to confront violent criminals with all the force at their disposal.
Unveiling the police’s holiday safety plan for the Western Cape, Cele told officers that “people who jump borders” were flooding into South Africa, competing for housing and resources and squeezing out locals.
Cele said this was fuelling xenophobic violence. “We can’t have a country that’s run by people who jump the borders.”
But later, pressed about his statement by a member of Khayelitsha’s Community Policing Forum, Cele retracted his words.