“Murder capital” residents welcome award for police station commander
Top Nyanga cop is “always willing to go out of his way to help”
Nyanga may have the most murders of all police precincts, but residents have plenty of praise for Nyanga police station commander Brigadier Vuyisile Ncata.
Ncata won the SAPS award for provincial station commander of the year at the provincial Excellence Awards last month. “We are very proud of him and after he received this well deserved award, we also gave him an award at our year-end function last week,” said Dumisani Qwebe of the Nyanga Community Policing Forum (CPF). “It was just to say thank you to him for the work that he has done and continues to do in our community.”
“He is a people’s person. You can ask any youngster in Nyanga who the station commander is and they will tell you because everyone knows him”.
According to Qwebe, Ncata was always a phone call away when the CPF or residents needed help.
The CPF is very active in Nyanga. It has for years been campaigning for an additional station in the area.
Nyanga resident and active community member Mabhuti Mkangeli described Ncata as “someone who is always willing to go out of his way to help you when you go to the police station”.
Nyanga is the precinct with the highest number of murders in the country at 289 according to the 2018/19 crime statistics.
Ncata started his career as a police officer in Port Elizabeth in 1994. He was a station commander in Langa before taking up the same position in Nyanga.
“I am really humbled with this award and even more humbled by the fact that I have so much support from the community,” said Ncata. “This award is a great motivation. In this line of work, building trust in the community is very important, and trust is earned.”
“We always need to remember that we are employed to serve and to protect. It doesn’t matter if you wake and you are having a bad day, once you wear that uniform and step into that police station, you make sure that you do what is expected of you and you turn that bad day into a good one,” said Ncata.
The provincial Excellence Awards, which have been running since 2004, are intended to reward police officials for hard work, dedication and going beyond the call of duty. Police spokesperson Novela Potelwa said criteria included reduction of crime, cases solved, time spent after hours doing work in support of organisational objectives, significant arrests, innovation and resourcefulness, and dedication to duty.
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