So Many Questions

The police say they can’t cope with the rising number of violent protests, and research shows these have almost doubled. Chris Barron asked Gareth Newham of the Institute for Security Studies . . .

Are we in trouble? Well, we certainly have seen substantial increases over the last decade or so in the number of protests and the number that have turned violent. They’ve almost doubled. How often are they escalated into violent protests by the police themselves? The police do cause protests to escalate when, for example, they arrive at a protest and give people who are not being violent 10 minutes to disperse and then start using rubber bullets and teargas. That escalates the situation, other people join and start throwing stones at the police and that leads to running battles which last for a long time. Is this becoming an increasing feature? It’s been a feature for the last 10 years. So their approach to public order policing has not changed in 10 years? Well, the first indication the police were finding themselves with a serious challenge was in 2012, when the police minister said they were going to make more arrests. We then had [national commissioner Riah] Phiyega saying she wanted R3-billion more to better equip the police. But police have announced this year that they want more police officers to go through a three-week public order policing course. So that’s a change. Three weeks is laughable, surely? At the moment they don’t get any training in public order policing at all, unless they’re part of the public order policing unit. We’ve got 4 200 specifically trained for that function. How well trained are they? I think the training is adequate. Based on international standards in terms of processes, protocols and regulations. You’re saying they’re as good as any in the world? The training is probably as good as any in the world. Where the challenge occurs is on the ground, where some units don’t adhere to their own training standards. Why? Bad leadership? Usually frontline leadership to do with supervisors on the ground, commanders not leading by example or [not] adhering to their own protocols, allowing their members to break the protocols and not holding them accountable. Because of poor training? Less about that than insufficient accountability. There need to be mechanisms for feedback so that when this comes to light at a higher level, action is taken against commanders. At Marikana we saw the commander clearly having lost control of his officers and not giving proper guidance and direction. With no disciplinary consequences? Well, seven police officers were eventually disciplined, but only because it was on national television. About 35 gatherings that take place every day which the police need to monitor or at least be present [at], and about five or six every day turn violent. Many are in peri-urban areas or poorer informal settlement or rural areas where there are no cameras or media, so a lot of that problematic policing behaviour doesn’t get escalated and isn’t responded to, and so it can continue. So things are much worse than we know about? It could be a lot worse. But it is important to recognise that 90% of the time the protests are largely peaceful. At the same time the deputy national commissioner tells parliament police cannot cope. They want more resources to buy the equipment they want, such as water cannon and body armour. Is he being deliberately alarmist, then? No, I think he’s trying to point out to the politicians that they need to take

this issue a lot more seriously. Ultimately the issue is politics rather than policing, isn’t it? Indeed. We can certainly increase police numbers, and that is on the table now, to increase the number of public order police to over 11 000. Is that the answer? The reality is that police are the last port of call. People’s complaints are ignored by the politicians and so they turn to disruption and violence as a way of drawing attention to their problems, and then you bring the police in. The real problem is political and the solution cannot be policing. But until that is addressed we’re dependent on the police knowing what to do and doing it? And not escalating the situation. Sometimes it is best for police to not engage, but to get government representatives to come to the scene and talk to the people. Are we sitting with the consequences of using the police as an employment agency? That is definitely part of the problem. Is it changing? Well, we can no longer afford to do that while our economy doesn’t grow. We’ve pretty much reached the limit. So they’ll have to focus on training rather than numbers? Yes. And when they do recruit, focus on quality. Is that likely? That’s already started happening. We’ve seen the appointment of better skilled police officials than we’ve seen for a long time. They’ve recognised that the solution can no longer be just appointing additional police, you need to look at the quality. Will this extend to the next commissioner? We certainly hope so.