Gaye Davis
A NEW “super-committee” aimed at slicing through red-tape and other obstacles hampering investigations into police violations of human rights is to be set up at national
The move comes days after human rights organisations released a 300-page report charging that police torture of suspects on criminal charges was endemic and that other abuses by police, including assaults and unlawful shootings, were “systemic, nation-wide problems within the ranks of the police”.
Compiled by the Network of Independent Monitors, the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture and the Independent Board of Inquiry, the report documents more than 350 cases of alleged human rights violations “no longer targeted at political detainees and activists, as in the past, but now primarily inflicted on criminal suspects”. Its title, Breaking with the Past, refers to Police Commissioner George Fivaz’s pledge on taking office that the new South African Police Service (SAPS) would make “a clean and definite break with the past”.
Natal and Witwatersrand police reporting officers (PROs) and human rights organisations met with representatives of Safety and Security Minister Sidney Mufamadi and Fivaz on Tuesday. They wanted an agreement that would see either the hand of PROs significantly strengthened in carrying out their investigations, or the creation of an interim independent complaints mechanism.
It was decided instead to set up the “super-committee” — a board which will comprise representatives from the ministry, the commissioner’s office and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including a PRO.
The interim Constitution provides for an Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) to monitor and track police abuses. Its form and functions will be spelled out in the new Police Bill currently being drafted, and expected to come before a Cabinet committee on May 25.
Mufamadi’s advisor, Azhar Cachalia, said it would be “a problem, practically and from a policy point of view” to set up an interim mechanism ahead of the Bill becoming law, “hopefully sometime in August”.
Any structure created would have a life of only two or three months before being superseded by the new directorate, he said.
Asked whether he was optimistic about how long it would take to get the Bill passed, Cachalia said: “It is a priority piece of legislation so we are certainly going to drive it through.” If it took longer, the life of the PRO system, set up in 1992 under the National Peace Accord, would be extended.
Witwatersrand PRO Jan Munnik, who argued at the meeting for PROs to be given expanded jurisdiction and powers as well as back-up staff, said the PRO system was “not working”.
“It is entirely dependent on the co-operation of the police. If they don’t want to help, then the whole system breaks down.” This was especially a problem where police were hostile to civilian interference.
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