Jan Taljaard in Pretoria
FEELINGS are running high among former security police members after they were apparently told they have no real future in the new South African Police Service.
Since being informed of serious cutbacks in the Crime Intelligence Service (CIS), many of its members are now threatening to disclose sensitive information that they allege will cause great embarrassment in government circles.
Disgruntled policemen say a series of meetings were held across the country last Friday in which members of the CIS were informed by senior officers that it will be cut back from approximately 3 000 to 400 members. Another 100 members of the ANC’s intelligence arm, DIS, will be joining the remaining 400 to establish a new intelligence unit in the police.
First in the firing line will be former members of the Security Branch and members who joined before 1992. While they will not be dismissed, they were allegedly told that other units in the SAPS are not eager to absorb them, as these units are wary of being “tainted” by former security cops.
According to members who attended these meetings, they were in particular aggrieved by what they regard as an arbitrary distinction being made between “clean” and “dirty” policemen. All those who had joined the Security Branch or CIS before 1992 are apparently all regarded as “dirty”, they say.
Reacting to rumours surfacing in the wake of these meetings, national commissioner George Fivaz denied in a statement that the Crime Intelligence Service (CIS) of the SAP is to be disbanded.
“Membership of the former security branch of the SAP or of the existing security branches of the former homeland agencies cannot in itself be a disqualification to membership in the SAPS,” he stated. “Any such step could only be regarded as discrminatory and in contravention of Section 3 of the Constitution,” Fivaz said.
This is however regarded as cold comfort by the policemen who feel they have been left in the lurch after promises were allegedly made to them before the 1994 elections that they will be “looked after.”