Police found wanting on 4IR skills

A DIGITAL savvy police force armed with the latest technology could have gone a long way to controlling the unrest last year, the South African Human Rights Commission heard this week.

During its Gauteng round of hearings into the violence and mayhem in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng last July, the commission heard that the police were not ready for the fourth industrial revolution (4IR).

Major-General Tommy Mthombeni, who was acting Gauteng police commissioner at the time, said the use of drones could have played a role in assisting them in their response.

With drones, the police would have been able to deploy the right number of officials to various hotspots, he said.

Instead, 49 officers were sent to the Jabulani Mall, while there were about 3 000 people in the crowd.

Mthombeni said while he was at the scene, 42 people were arrested and several stolen goods confiscated, but the police were clearly outnumbered.

With drones, they would have been in a position to direct people (police) instead of them approaching unknown terrain, Mthombeni said.

A drone is a flying robot fitted with a camera or scanner, which can send images or information back to the person controlling it from the ground.

Mthombeni said in Gauteng, police collaborated with security companies and often used drones over mining areas, but the police also needed the equipment and training to use this technology.

As early as 2020, former Communications

Minister Stella Ndabeni Abrahams announced that technology was one of the critical drivers for better service delivery.

She also said that President Cyril Ramaphosa had set up a commission to develop a 4IR blueprint for the country.

In his testimony at the commission this week, Police Minister Bheki Cele said they were under-resourced and that he had not been told that police had underspent its budget by billions.

He said Intelligence had unused equipment worth hundreds of millions of rand, which could have been used to detect and decode the messages inciting the July unrest on social media.

In its report into the unrest, an expert panel established by Ramaphosa flagged the widespread use of social media in organising the July violence.