S. Africa to increase spending in fighting crime: finance minister

The South African government will increase spending in fighting crime which has reached "unacceptably high levels," Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene said on Wednesday.

"We'll have to confront unacceptably high levels of crime. Government spending on public order and safety and on defence will therefore continue to increase, from 163 billion rand (about 14.2 billion U.S. dollars) this year to 193 billion rand by 2017/18," Nene said in his National Budget speech at a joint sitting of the National Assembly and National Council of Provinces.

Police services receive about 48 percent of the total allocation, while a total amount of 492 million rand has been reprioritised towards improving access to justice over the medium term, Nene said.

The office of Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng has been established as a new department to strengthen the independence of the judiciary.

It becomes fully operational on April 1, 2015, with a budget over the medium-term expenditure framework of 5.2 billion rand, Nene said.

This will increase capacity for court support personnel, public defenders and prosecutors.

Additional allocations have been made to the public protector and the financial intelligence centre for increasing their human resource capacity, according to Nene.

South Africa's defence force will continue to be deployed for safeguarding the borders and in peacekeeping operations in several conflict areas, Nene said.

Budget provision for border safeguarding and regional security amounts to 2.8 billion rand and 4.5 billion rand, respectively over the next three years.

"The budget also includes 834 million rand for access of military veterans to healthcare and housing services," said Nene. Endi