Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi has apologised to police Minister Bheki Cele after threatening his position over the weekend. In a circulating video clip that runs for just two minutes. Lesufi told Cele that his days were numbered if he did not want to recognise the Gauteng Crime Prevention Unit, known as Amapanyaza. Lesufi made the comments during the South African National Civic Organisation on Sunday night.

"We have trained these young people to be police wardens. You, as a police minister, are refusing to recognise them. Your days are numbered. We can't, when young people are assisting us to fight crime, you want to undermine them. You can't when we have trained young people to be on the streets in our townships and protect our young people when they are studying at night in our schools, you don't want to recognise them. "We say to this minister, give us the power for these young people to have the power to get guns so that they protect our townships and chase away criminals in our own areas. We are committed to that," said Lesufi. The 6000 wardens were recruited in April as part of the premier's commitment to fighting crime in the province and went through a three-month training programme.

Lesufi said that he takes full responsibility for the comments he made against Cele and that he was sorry. "In the last 24 hours, I've noted with disappointment the slicing and leaking of a video recording of an internal political presentation I made to a gathering of one of our alliance partners and the chairperson of the ANC in Gauteng, I was giving an update to one of our alliance partners about the progress and challenges we are experiencing in implementing one of the 2019 ANC Manifesto commitments to fight crime in our province," Lesufi said in a statement. He added that the content of his presentation as per the leaked video, came across as insensitive and threatening to a government minister and for that, he apologises. "Unfortunately this leaked brief except of my extensive presentation did not put our appreciation of organisations into context instead, it elevated our concerns and frustrations. Passionate internal political deliberations among haste and allies laced with frustration, delivered in haste and little can cause harm when none was intended," he said. Cele has not commented on Lesufi's comments.