I could hardly believe my eyes. There they were, shouting obscenities and hitting human beings on the head and in the face, and kicking them in the ribs. Two people who had just had a serious accident and were clearly dazed, if not unconscious, were tossed out of their car, handcuffed and beaten.
The people carrying out the beatings were the police of the new South Africa. Carrying on as if television cameras were not filming them. If they could do this knowing that BBC cameras were filming it, then what do they do when they are in the “privacy” of unfilmed patrols, or in the dark recesses of police stations?
What we saw in that little bit of film suggests that part of the genesis of the mindless violence which is currently afflicting South Africa could lie with the police. If criminal suspects are treated with brutality – and remember that at the time the police arrest them they are only suspects – more people will certainly join the ranks of those already immersed in violent crime. For disrespect for the law, especially on the part of law enforcement agents, is one sure cause of rampant criminality.
Secondly, if the police can inflict severe punishment on a routine basis on suspects, their ability and willingness to detect crime suffers. Subconsciously, they “know” who the “criminal” in a case is, and by beating or otherwise mistreating him, have already inflicted punishment. So detecting the crime in an efficient professional manner and obtaining a conviction, becomes, subconsciously, “a waste of time”. The culture becomes one of, “Oh, let the bastard go. What is the use? Those lawyers will free him anyway. Hey, you, if you are brought here again, you will go out in a coffin. You hear? Can those big hard ears of yours hear that? Eh?”
Finally, breaches of the law by the police themselves are the first step towards police corruption. If they can ignore the laws that prevent them from abusing the human rights of suspects, what prevents them from associating with criminal gangs? Supplying them guns? Tipping them off about police movements?
I was in South Africa in 1990, when so-called “black on black” violence was on everyone’s lips. A lot of people I talked to believed that “black on black” violence was caused by “tribal animosity”. The Zulus didn’t like the African National Congress because the ANC was a largely Xhosa party. So they entered trains and killed ANC supporters going to and from work. And ANC cadres entered Zulu hostels and retaliated.
This seemed to me to be bizarre reasoning. How could a Zulu, seeing me, a Ghanaian, on a train bound for Soweto, know that I was a Xhosa, an ANC-supporting Xhosa at that, before opening fire on me? If he could not tell I was not even a South African, how could he tell I wasn’t a Zulu? Language? The guys were hooded and hardly ever spoke to their victims. In any case, suppose I was a Zulu raised in the United States?
Yet this talk of “black on black” violence was the peddled wisdom. Even some of my black South African friends wrung their hands in pitiful self-condemnation, lamenting, “Oh, we are so stupid! Killing each other for nothing.”
And then we began to hear the revelations about how the hit squads were being professionally trained by the third force. And I had to tell myself that the South African police force must have had a secret agenda to destabilise South African society. Because if I, a stranger, could punch holes in the alleged motivation for “black on black” violence, why couldn’t the police force of a country on the nuclear threshold determine that someone was instigating these high-profile murders on trains to sell the world the idea that blacks were too stupid to rule?
Corruption in the mind – characterised by a willingness to eschew professional detection standards to serve political ends – begets corruption in other police practices. Yet the ANC, which was the victim of deliberate police blindness, has decided that it can trust the police. Have they heard of the African proverb which says you will always find blood in the head of a tsetse fly, whether it has bitten someone recently or not?
Get rid of the old political police force and find the money to replace it with a new professional force. Or they will sink you, guys.
Of course, the police are not, repeat not, the only element in the South African crime equation. Social causes of a distressing nature also contribute. To visit Chicken Farm in Soweto shortly after having just lunched in plush Sandhurst is an experience that should be urged on the affluent people of South Africa. How can a society preside over such a disparity in living standards, occasioned mainly by skin colour?
If the affluent people of South Africa were clever, they would agree to impose on themselves a voluntary “restitution levy” for the upliftment of life in the townships. For if they have forgotten that South African prosperity was based on gold – which means black labour – those in the townships have not. And if amenities don’t go to the townships, the worst members of the township unemployed will come to the lush suburbs to steal money.
I pray to God to save South Africa from violent people; violent rapists; violent thugs; violent car-jackers. And also from the people who use their brains to filch money violently from the poor, through the “free market”. For they could turn this most beautiful land into a no-go area for all, except selfish, armour-plated, upwardly mobile yobs.