Meet Gauteng’s new top cop
Gauteng’s new police commissioner, Lieutenant-General Deliwe de Lange, spent years running one of the toughest parts of the province.
|||Johannesburg - Gauteng’s new police commissioner spent years running one of the toughest parts of the province.
Lieutenant-General Deliwe de Lange has been a police officer for more than 30 years, based in Gauteng, and this month takes over as the provincial commissioner.
She was promoted from the rank of major-general and the position of deputy commissioner for human resource management, the job she’d held since February, last year.
Six years prior to that, De Lange was the cluster commander for Sebokeng in southern Gauteng.
That’s a cluster with eight police stations - Boipatong, Ennerdale, Evaton, Orange Farm, Sebokeng, Sharpeville, The Barrage and Vanderbijlpark - and it’s a tough neighbourhood.
“Her cluster was number one in Gauteng a number of times,” said Gauteng SAPS spokeswoman Colonel Noxolo Kweza.
That’s the SAPS performance which assesses matters like police speed of reaction to crimes, attention to complaints and interaction with the community.
She has a national diploma in policing, a certificate in leadership and project management from Unisa, with various awards including the senior manager of the year (twice) and the Provincial Commissioner’s Award.
Kweza said De Lange had a “great deal of experience as an all-rounder” in the SAPS.
“She has made history by becoming the first female provincial commissioner to be appointed in Gauteng and she intends to sweep the province clean of crime and corruption,” said Kweza.
De Lange joined the police in 1983 at the age of 22 and was among the first 20 black woman police officers at Hammanskraal Police College, said Kweza.
In 1985, she started work at Vosloorus police station and rose through the ranks, through the police stations.
By 2002, she was appointed station commander at Tsakane and at the end of 2004 moved to Kempton Park as station commander until 2009, when she was appointed commander of the Sebokeng cluster.
While she was cluster commander, police massively increased the fight against drugs, with a big jump in cases across the cluster. Contact crimes dropped significantly at the time in Sebokeng, Boipatong, Ennerdale, Sharpeville and The Barrage, but rose in Evaton, Orange Farm and Vanderbijlpark.
Gauteng Premier David Makhura congratulated her.
“She brings a wealth of experience to help us fight crime and build a safer Gauteng,” said Makhura. Her most urgent task would be to improve police visibility to restore public confidence in the police capacity to fight crime.
“Crime remains a major concern for the people of Gauteng. At the end of March, I will have a session with the leadership of law-enforcement agencies to plan a way forward,” the premier said.
Former Gauteng police commissioner Lieutenant-General Lesetja Mothiba was recently promoted to head of the national Management Intervention Unit.
De Lange takes over from acting commissioner Major-General Eric Nkuna, who replaced Lieutenant-General Lesetja Mothiba after Mothiba was moved to head the new Intervention Unit tasked with assessing the performance of the SAPS at head office.
Mothiba was appointed Gauteng police commissioner after suspended national police commissioner Riah Phiyega fired Lieutenant-General Mondli Zuma, hours after announcing he was the top cop for Gauteng.
Phiyega said at the time that Zuma, who was to replace Lieutenant-General Mzwandile Petros, had not informed the SAPS of any pending criminal investigations against him.
Zuma was subsequently acquitted of those charges.
The Star