Seth Nthai
WE repeatedly hear arguments from certain political parties and individuals that the solution to our crime problems is to devolve enough police powers to provinces. According to them, devolution of police powers would strengthen the arm of the South African Police Service (SAPS).
I believe the devolution of police powers to provinces, to the exclusion of the role of national government, will not reduce the levels of crime in our country.
With the advent of democracy, the Ministry of Safety and Security had to amalgamate 11 police agencies, all with different training standards, investigation skills, codes of conduct, promotion policies and uniforms. And we inherited a police service that is corrupt.
It was painful to discover that the police, especially from the former bantustans, were poorly trained with a loose promotion policy often vulgarised by nepotism, corruption and tribalism. This meant many senior police officials received promotions like Christmas gifts from their political masters. To our horror there is not a single black police pilot, even though some bantustans were independent and the police had many aircraft. The former Venda bantustan had only one black bomb-disposal police expert. The majority of members of the SAPS lack requisite police skills.
The SAPS needs immediate and proper training programmes. National Commissioner George Fivaz has announced several training programmes geared towards capacitating the SAPS. It is within this context that we need to understand the tricky question of devolution of police powers to provinces.
At the moment, there isn’t a single province in South Africa capable of running its own effective police service. Let us take the Northern Province as an example. We inherited four police agencies: Venda, Lebowa, Gazankulu and the South African Police. Most members of these police services lack skills. I cannot imagine more police powers in our province as long as the police have not undergone any intensive training programmes. Any devolution of more exclusive police powers to provinces will, once more, create disorganised, ill- equipped and undisciplined pockets of police units.
The SAPS or provincial governments on their own cannot solve the problems of crime, unless the people themselves decide to assist the police in the fight against crime. Our new Constitution provides a good balance between provincial and national police powers. We need to understand devolution of police powers within the context of creating a single, united, non- racial and non-sexist national police service.
Politicians across the political spectrum must have realised the legacy of apartheid cannot be addressed piecemeal by different provincial governments. We need a strong central government to do that. We are all aware of inefficiency, financial mismanagement and rampant corruption in most of the provinces. All these problems have been inherited from the apartheid regime.
We have witnessed a sharp increase in violent crimes. No place is safe any more and the SAPS seems to be fighting a losing battle against criminals. The time has arrived for us to consider establishing an elite unit to deal with violent criminals.
This unit could draw members from the SAPS and the South African National Defence Force, highly trained in the use of lethal force, to track down violent criminals and be able to match the force that may be applied by them. In other countries like Brazil, a similar unit ended up being a law unto themselves. But in South Africa, our Constitution is pregnant with structures like the Public Protector, Human Rights Commission, etc. The Police Act also provides for the establishment of the Independent Complaints Directorate and community police forums.
We also urgently need criminal justice forums. Three weeks ago, I read in City Press that East Rand detectives and the Tembisa community police forum called for the immediate dismissal of a prosecutor and a magistrate, apparently due to dissatisfaction with their performance. A letter of complaint has been sent to the authorities. But the forum does not have monitoring powers over the justice officials: it only has powers to monitor the activities of the police.
We need to establish criminal justice forums so our people can monitor the activities of the police, justice and correctional services.
— Seth Nthai is MEC for safety and security, Northern Province