Objection to merging police unconstitutional
EVERTHELESS, let’s spare a thought for De Villiers, who during his career scored 27 tries internationally, playing as a centre or wing.
He was an integral part of the side that won the 2004 and 2009 TriNations competitions, and a series against the British and Irish Lions in 2009. He took the national team reins in 2012, leading the men in green and gold more than 50 times.
De Villiers is a World Cup winner – in the 2007 event he tore his bicep muscle in the opening game and missed the rest of the tournament.
He was a warrior to the last, and gave his heart and soul to the cause. THE LETTER from Mireille Wenger (“Merging of cops a flawed plan”, September 17) is an attack on our country’s constitution – that the DA routinely claims to uphold.
Section 199 (1) of the constitution states very clearly that “the security services of the Republic consist of a single police service and any intelligence services established in terms of the constitution”.
The city council’s myriad metro police sub-units that they formed, like the Gang Intervention, Special Investigating and Intelligence Units, mirror similar units already operating within the police.
The DA’s opposition to the merging of the junior metro police units with police appears to be a veiled attempt by the council to form its own parallel police force.
A glaring fact that they appear to have overlooked is that these units do not have any teeth, since investigative powers lie only with the national police service.
Nobody seems to know from which budget several ex police generals now working for the council are being paid.
The duplication of these existing resources is a further waste of taxpayers’ money that can be better used to address the many service delivery failures on the Cape Flats that give rise to gangsterism and crime in general.
It cannot be right in any constitutional democracy that a minority political party holds the rest of the country to ransom.
The sooner these amendments to the Police Act for a single police service are promulgated, the better it will be for our all our people, including the many innocent victims of crime.