An Amnesty International report released this week says torture and ill-treatment are the most frequently reported human-rights violations committed by police in Southern Africa.
The Policing to Protect Human Rights report found the South African Police Service (SAPS) was often cited for bribery and corruption. It also found a high level of illiteracy in the SAPS.
The report, based on a study of the policing methods of Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, found that human rights violations “occur predominantly in the context of criminal investigations but are also used to terrorise political opponents”.
Violations occur in three areas: “During the investigation of crime and the arrest, detention and interrogation of suspects; when dealing with vulnerable social groups; … and in the policing of activities essential to participation in the political life of the country.
“In South Africa a Zimbabwean citizen, Thabani Ndlodlo, was awarded damages in 1999 after the state conceded that two police officers had unlawfully assaulted him and shot him in the legs after attempting to extract a bribe from him as a suspected illegal immigrant. They had also maliciously prosecuted him on criminal charges and wrongfully detained him for 446 days,” says the report.
The report says several hundred deaths occur in police custody or “as a result of police action” in South Africa each year. It found that investigations by the Independent Complaints Directorate show the majority of these deaths have resulted from the use of force or torture by police, mostly at the time of arrest. Some of the incidents have involved summary executions of criminal suspects.
“In South Africa, Zakhele Mabhida was fatally shot by police on 23 April 2001 in the offices of the Durban Murder and Robbery Unit. Several hours earlier, he had handed himself over, unarmed, to the police in connection with an investigation into the killing of two police officers. Forensic medical evidence indicated that he had multiple gunshot injuries and had been shot at close range in the chest,” the report says.
Other findings include the existence of torture rooms.
“Consistent accounts from survivors of torture by members of the Brixton Serious and Violent Crimes Investigation Unit in South Africa indicate that interrogators have used a toilet at the unit’s headquarters where victims have been tied up, naked and hooded, and subjected to electric shock torture,” says the report.
The report found that torture methods vary from country to country but that there are similarities in torture techniques across countries, which “raises the troubling issue of how police officers learn torture techniques”.
Torture methods referred to in the report are suffocation with the inner tube of a car tyre or a plastic bag. This is hard to detect medically in survivors. These methods have been reported in Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland and, less frequently, in Botswana.
“A similar method of torture, referred to as the ‘helicopter’, was once notorious among members of the former security branch in apartheid South Africa and has also been reported in Swaziland,” the report says.
Under-resourcing of formal police services and a lack of faith in the capacity of the police has led to the rapid growth of “poorly regulated private security services”, mostly to the benefit of private businesses and wealthy residential areas.
In South Africa more than 200 police officers are killed yearly, the highest global rate for such deaths, a recent study shows. The report suggests that “such a high level of killings must have a profound impact on morale and on feelings of safety and security among other officers”.
“These conditions underlie one of the main contexts in which human rights violations by police occur: in the investigation and combating of ordinary crime,” says the report.
Among the recommendations in the report is that governments should “take steps to improve police officers’ conditions of work and the resources available to police forces to enable them to perform their duties in a professional manner”.
The report highlights positive aspects of policing in South Africa. Since 1995 the SAPS has put in place “one of the most comprehensive programmes of human-rights training in the region. By the end of 2001 approximately 29 000 officers had been trained.”
Special training on law-enforcement issues relating to women and children has been introduced in Zambia and South Africa, where victim support units have been established in some police stations.
“Staff of the recently established Directorate of Special Operations receive special training in crime investigation skills under a cooperation agreement with the UK Police Training College at Hendon and Metropolitan Police,” says the report.
In addition to these changes, the SAPS is following a “friendlier” approach in dealing with crowds and marches. Emphasis in South Africa has shifted from crowd control to crowd management. Police officers undergo training that stresses minimum use of force with a gradual response. Officers start with negotiations and move to offensive manoeuvres only when other approaches have failed. The police have also recently introduced training in “soft” skills, such as conflict resolution and conciliation.
As part of the “friendlier” approach, the report says, in late 1998 the SAPS adopted a policy “to regulate the detention and interrogation of criminal suspects in custody at police stations and provide safeguards in areas such as record-keeping and medical care”.
With regard to internal monitoring and dealing with complaints from the public, the SAPS has a “variety of internal systems … these include a complaints investigation section and an inspectorate at the office of the national commissioner of police”. Recommendations in the report are that the policing in SADC countries should endeavour to ensure accountability, provide sufficient training for police officers, conform to international rights standards and guarantee professional and impartial policing.
Business and company sponsorships of anti-crime initiatives were encouraged so that human rights standards can be promoted, as long as this does not increase disparities in resources for policing between richer and poorer areas.