On a mission for justice
Mahlatse Mashamaite is a complaints official, under the department of civilian secretariat for police within the Department of Transport and Community Safety.
She says her passion lies in education and law, and she has identified these two areas as key catalysts for transformation in South Africa and made it her personal mission to drive the initiative. She is currently the youngest complaints management officer in the province. Her responsibilities include improving police service delivery. On a practical level, she is responsible for ensuring compliance in the South African Police Service which entails to facilitate the process to develop compliance in monitoring policies, guidelines and procedures, design compliance monitoring tools, guidelines and systems.
She analyses the Domestic Violence Act and gender-based violence-related legislation and policies in relation to policing mandates, ensures compliance with national directives, monitor and evaluate SAPS compliance with the Domestic Violence Act and other gender-based violence- related legislation and policies.
“Furthermore, I need to plan and conceptualise compliance monitoring projects, facilitates national and provincial compliance monitoring team activities, facilitate oversight visit processes, assists to evaluate, and guide data collection processes.” Mashamaite’s work involves investigating dissatisfaction experienced by any person or an organisation in relation to an action or inaction regarding the service that was rendered or supposed to be rendered by the police.
“The mantra by which I live my life, and why I chose to work as a public servant is: We may not be able to solve all the problems, but we will certainly retire having tried. Our call is for people to break the silence and report any crime to the police. Should they not be satisfied with the service they received or the investigations, they must approach the civilian secretariat for police for assistance.
“She says when reporting a complaint the minimum information required includes the full names and surname of the complainant, identity number, residential/business address, telephone and cell phone numbers and e-mail address.
“We will also require that you provide a description of the complaint including the name of the police station where the complaint originated, and the case number if applicable. If there are more details of the SAPS employees involved that would also help.”