Police call

BROADLY speaking, policing is the maintenance of law and order in a society by a civil force (or service, as South Africa prefers to have it).

This is a vital task: any society needs crime to be detected and prevented and public order to be maintained if it is to function properly.

The consequences of failure are ghastly. Corruption flourishes, crime multiplies, vigilantism takes hold, protests frequently turn violent and citizens quietly begin arming themselves.

All of these symptoms of dysfunctional policing are, of course, present to some degree – sometimes alarmingly – in South Africa today.

And barely a week passes by without fresh confirmation that the South African Police Service is not in great shape.

The most striking of these was the Marikana massacre, now the subject of a judicial commission of inquiry. Whatever the judge finds the causes to be, part of the responsibility for the bloodshed on that ignominious day must lie with a failure of policing: it is inconceivable that a well-trained and functioning police service needs to resort to such action.

Newspaper readers are frequently regaled with depressing fare about poor training of officers and apparently senseless deployment of police resources. For example, only 3.3 percent of SAPS members have been trained to deal with sexual offences, which have reached plague-like levels in this country.

Residents of certain areas have lost faith in their local police. The Social Justice Coalition has, for example, documented the many problems facing Khayelitsha residents seeking help from their local police.

And yesterday this newspaper reported on the Auditor-General’s staggering finding that nearly 60 percent of crimes reported to SAPS 10111 call centres that should have resulted in dockets being opened were not properly registered.

All the indications are that disastrous political appointments of police commissioners and neglect in this key portfolio have brought policing close to meltdown.

If this is not prevented – through significant, urgent and direct leadership – the consequences will be counted in blood.