SAPS cherry-picks from 136 recommendations on democratic policing by expert panel on Marikana massacre

Police Minister Bheki Cele has made the case of police officers killed on and off duty his mission – and has taken it all the way to Cabinet. 

The official statements of the consecutive Cabinet meetings on 10 and 24 March described attacks and killings of police officers as “concerning”, “not only barbaric but also a threat to national security”, and “not only cowardly, but also unpatriotic, and should not be tolerated in our society.” 

On Monday, Cele again highlighted that few, if any, people called for the police to be protected. That was a concern for him, and police management. 

“In other parts of the world killing the police is treason. Our call is to say we must be outraged when [members of] the police [force are] killed, as we are when police themselves do the wrong things.” 

All this talks to an official attitude of “them against us”, and feeds into a narrative that police are under siege and must defend themselves. But this official narrative does nothing to transform the SAPS, demilitarise it or professionalise it.

And it’s also not what the 2018 report of the independent expert panel on policing is about, given that the Marikana Commission of Inquiry said it should deal not only with SAPS crowd management, but policing in a constitutional democracy. 

Or, as a member of the independent multidisciplinary expert panel, Eldred de Klerk, put it at Monday’s briefing: “This report has to be understood as a tool. It’s one of the opportunities to debate the kind of police we deserve and the kind of police we want.” 

The 596-page report, dated May 2018 – it was officially submitted to Cele in July 2018 – was finally published on Monday, but without the trove of supporting documents, including papers on demilitarisation, professionalisation and use of force. It’s understood the panel had asked for these also to be made public in line with a previous understanding, ultimately not acted on, that the police ministry would workshop the report and its recommendations with interested parties, from the SAPS itself, to academics, MPs and others. 

What emerged on Monday was cherry-picking from the 136 recommendations by the minister and police commissioner to show action over the past almost three years. 

Cele said several things had been done. “We did not sit back, we did not wait for the day of the publishing [of the report].” 

It was about new equipment: “the new specially produced cars with the water cannons, well-equipped with first aid kits”, loudhailers and cameras, at a cost of R598-million; and 6,324 police officials trained and declared competent in crowd management. 

It was about adjusting training modules and rewriting national instructions to, for example, stipulate distances at which rubber bullets might be used. The panel’s Recommendation 98 makes it clear rubber bullets must be prohibited at short range unless there’s a serious and immediate risk to life and “should be aimed to strike directly (i.e. without bouncing) the lower part of the person’s body (i.e. below the rib cage)”. 

According to Cele, “The bulk of the recommendations are to be realised in the short to medium term as they are incorporated into the SAPS Act Amendment Bill.” 

Actually, like Monday’s official silence on the national policing board, the draft bill is silent on the national policing board. The draft legislation is more about ministerial powers and creating a national structure for community policing forums.

But that national policing board is a central structure in the 2012 National Development Plan, or the agreed blueprint for South Africa, and features in the white paper on policing. 

The panel also viewed such an independent structure as central to SAPS transformation and professionalisation. It would conduct the processes for the appointment of police officers according to competency and experience, rather than mechanical rank promotion or nepotistic and politically motivated appointments. 

But the politicians have another view. And while some may hope that persistent silence on the national policing board will make this central feature of SAPS professionalisation go away, demilitarisation was given a shrug-off on Monday. 

Research by the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service found no militarisation of visible policing, even as the research parameters are unclear, given the militaristic SAPS ranks echoing army hierarchies. But it was sufficient for Cele. 

The independent panel has presented recommendations to haul the SAPS out of systemic decline marked not only by internal fighting over positions and perks, but also the brutality meted out by its members to the public, such as firing a water cannon at vulnerable grant applicants in Cape Town.