Angella Johnson
Senior black managers in the South African Police Service (SAPS) warned this week that they are no longer prepared to accept widespread and endemic racism from white colleagues, and would strike if necessary to force the police to stamp out racism.
Officers from national and provincial police structures met on November 2 to highlight what they describe as “covert and overt” acts of racism, which they claim undermine their ability to function effectively. They plan to form an organised body, the Black Managers’ Forum, to represent them in their campaign.
“We need a platform to put issues on the national agenda among all this transformation stuff,” said Azwinndini Nengovhela, a director and SAPS media representative for Gauteng, who was reportedly referred to as a kaffir by a senior white officer.
“I had expected that we could have risen above this kind of thing, but it has not been the case. Many [junior] black members are now saying: `If it can happen to you, imagine what it is like for the rest of us.’ But we don’t really know how much of a problem this is.”
Those who attended the three-hour meeting in Pretoria were clearly angry that, despite the SAPS’s claim to be an equal opportunity employer with an affirmative action programme, more than 90% of SAPS managers were white and more than 90% of official documents were written in Afrikaans.
Racial discrimination – such as areas where toilets are still reserved for white members – was the main grievance highlighted by the meeting.
“We also have an issue with the under- allocation of resources to traditionally disadvantaged areas,” complained Strini Govender, a senior superintendent in national SAPS human resources management. “And nothing has been done to remedy the situation.”
Willem Basson, an assistant director in the safety and security secretariat, claimed there is a racist resistance to change which is organised from a senior level by white supremacist groups within the SAPS. He is one of seven officers who has been co-opted into an interim steering committee for the planned Black Managers’ Forum.
Basson argued that too often black managers were put in positions where their weaknesses would be exposed. These weaknesses were then used as examples to show that black people are not up to the job.
Free State social worker Paul Mphenyeke agreed. “We are especially marginalised in the former homelands by white managers who not only see us as corrupt, but think they can do the job better than us. Yet when they have to make senior black appointments they usually opt for the least capable of us to act as window dressing.”
The forum, which will be launched in February next year, is intended to unite all black SAPS members in the fight for their rights, to instil a sense of pride in what they do and to eradicate racism from the service.