The chair of the parliamentary portfolio committee on police, Ian Cameron, has slammed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s pledges on gender-based violence and femicide made during an address on Tuesday evening, during which the president set out a four-point plan to address the situation.

“I’m going to be very blunt. The President lied. It’s literally that simple,” Cameron said in an online interview.

He said that the president had delivered an address on the matter seven years ago, but that the situation had only deteriorated in the intervening years. Repeated appeals to do something about the crisis went unheeded, and with emotions rising, Ramaphosa was attempting to position himself as a “saviour, to address the issue and pull everyone together”.

Cameron was particularly scathing about whether some of the commitments made in the president’s address could be carried out: “He spoke about and announced a national unresolved case audit within 60 days. Even if the police wanted to do a detailed case audit, they don’t have the capacity to do it. They can do basic auditing from the case administration system, but they don’t have the capacity or the forensic depth to properly audit some of these cases. He spoke of a funded forensic backlog plan within 60 days. Again, a lie.”

Turning to the situation in Ekurhuleni, where a spate of murders of women has garnered widespread attention, and which led to the president’s address, Cameron described police stations in a state of decay and crisis. The Tembisa station, close to Kempton Park in Ekurhuleni where a number of the murders have taken place, did not even have proper lighting, and no generator to provide back-up power. He said that the recent “lockdown” to combat crime announced by Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi was beyond the capacity of the police or the provincial government.

In Lesufi’s case, Cameron said he “didn’t even have the knowhow and capability of successfully driving a basic traffic warden programme.”

Most seriously, expenditure showed that the government was failing in prioritising people’s safety. Suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu had received some R3.16 million since going on special leave. For this sum, Cameron calculated, 12 junior detectives could have been employed.

Beyond the salary, though, Mchunu still received VIP protection, at a cost of around R8 million a year. This could have funded another 31 junior detectives.

“In total we could have appointed 43 junior detectives for the money that we have wasted on a minister who’s not working at the moment and the president tells us that we now are prioritising violence against women and children,” Cameron said.