Mthethwa vows to clean up police
CAPE TOWN — Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa faced angry parliamentarians yesterday over the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) failure to root out the number of criminals allowed to remain police officers.
In the past financial year there were literally thousands of complaints against police officers and more than 700 deaths as a result of police action, necessitating a contingent liability for the SAPS of some R20bn to settle civil cases it might lose.
Some of the high-profile incidents have been the killing of 34 miners by police at Marikana, the dragging and later death of Mozambican Mido Macia, the shooting of Ficksburg activist Andries Tatane, and numerous complaints of increased use of torture by the police.
Introducing his budget vote in the National Assembly, Mr Mthethwa said he remained “committed to cleaning up the police service through strong internal oversight, which police management must exercise.
“Equally, through strong external oversight in the form of the Independent Police Investiga- tive Directorate (IPID), we have been able to arrest those whose actions shame our badges and uniforms. This was evident in the swift actions taken by the IPID and SAPS in recent incidents.
“This all demonstrates our resoluteness in dealing with matters of police criminality”.
He said the IPID had identified systemic corruption as one of its priorities for the short to medium term, and “we believe that the IPID will deal a deeper blow to police criminality by being proactive rather than being reactive.
“This will ensure police officers, who commit the crimes identified in the IPID Act, are prosecuted effectively in the courts”.
Mr Mthethwa also sought to debunk an impression that the reintroduction of military ranks had resulted in increased violent crime by police.
“There is no direct linkage to the number of deaths in custody to the introduction of ranks. We have looked at IPID figures and cannot correlate the figures to the introduction of military ranks.
“In 2008-09, before the rank structure was introduced, the number of incidents recorded by the IPID increased by 15% but the following three years saw a decrease of 21.1%. Therefore whilst we remain concerned about any loss of life irrespective of whatever circumstances, there is no evidence to link this to the introduction of military ranks.”
But Democratic Alliance MP Dianne Kohler Barnard disagreed. Mentioning the large contingent liability of potentially R20bn, she said: “most of this is to pay civilians for having been shot, raped, beaten, robbed, hijacked, raped in cells, illegally detained, run over, wrongfully arrested, or to the families of those tortured or murdered — all of these actions perpetrated by SAPS members.
“There were almost 5,000 complaints against SAPS members this past year, with 720 deaths by SAPS members, 88 cases of domestic violence by SAPS members, and 2,320 allegations of criminal offences by SAPS members. We’ve seen the filmed footage of a number of these cases — as has the rest of the world — and yet President Jacob Zuma refused my request to establish a judicial commission of inquiry into police brutality, saying that it was unnecessary.”
Both Congress of the People MP Mluleki George and Inkatha Freedom Party MP Velaphi Ndlovu said that bad apples were tarnishing the image of the police service in general.