Mail & Guardian reporter
The future of the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) occult-related crime unit hangs in the balance.
Its supporters say senior police officers at national headquarters are blocking attempts by the unit to investigate satanic-related crimes and want to disband it.
This is despite mounting concerns that there will be an increase in ritual murders as the millennium approaches. In the past seven years, the number of murders linked to satanic cults averaged about four a year.
Last year the number of satanic murders was 10. In the first three months of this year, the number of murders recorded by the unit was five.
But the top brass believes that the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, does not allow police officers to warn the public about the dangers of Satanism.
The detective service, of which the occult- related crime unit forms part, denied there were plans to close it down.
Its representative, Senior Superintendent Faizel Abdul-Kader, said: “There were discussions and debates regarding the standing of a unit like [the] occult- related crimes unit. But at no stage was any decision taken to close down the unit.”
He said the detective service was currently being restructured to become more efficient.
One person who is very concerned about the future of the unit is a Cape Town mother whose 20-year-old son went missing last August. He was last seen in the company of two women who are believed to be “high priestesses” of a satanic cult.
The mother, who did not want to be named, received a letter from a senior commissioner which read: “Authorisation granted to assist in the investigation into the disappearance of your son has been withdrawn owing to financial constraints.”
The commissioner also sent letters to high school principals and station commanders around the country citing “financial constraints” as the reason why the head of the occult-related crime unit, Senior Superintendent Kobus Jonker, could not respond to requests to address students and community policing forums on the dangers of Satanism.
Two branches of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Western Cape had their requests for Jonker to address a seminar on Satanism turned down by the commissioner.
An internal SAPS document written last October expresses concern about the role of policing religious activities. It says: “Due to constitutional restraints, this task [crime prevention] will in future be left to the various churches and the police will not be able to continue this as a police function.”
The letters have opened old wounds between regular policing units and the occult- related crimes unit.
“There are fellow officers who are doing their best to close the unit down. They see us as just ghost-busters,” said a former member of the unit, who declined to be named.
The unit was formed in 1992 with 54 police officers. There are currently 26 police officers around the country in the unit.
The former officers said there had been systematic and sustained efforts to close the unit down by frustrating its attempts to investigate occult-related crimes and by not taking the officers seriously.
Colonel Willie Rabald, who headed the Bloemfontein occult-related crime unit in 1993, said senior officers hampered his investigations until eventually “they forbade me to investigate crimes related to Satanism”. He says he was transferred to seven different police stations in four years until senior officers “forced” him to resign in 1997.