The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) vowed on Friday to intensify its protest action, failing a positive response to its demands relating to issues like low salaries, transformation failures, police killings and overcrowded prisons.
”We are prepared to leave blood on the floor if these things are not met,” Popcru president Zizamele Cebekhulu told several hundred members at the start of a protest march to the head offices of the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) and SA Police Service (SAPS) in Pretoria.
A Popcru spokesperson gauged the crowd to be 10 000 strong, while police estimates ranged from 600 to 4 000.
Cebekhulu said Popcru might march to Parliament in August.
”We are right now to occupy your offices and there is nothing you can do,” he said, referring to the top management of the DCS and SAPS.
In memoranda handed to the two institutions, Popcru demanded that police should earn the same as members of the Scorpions, the Independent Complaints Directorate and the metro police, and that DCS officials should enjoy remuneration equal to that of private prisons’ employees.
”We are tired of the SAPS pleading poverty every day,” said Cebekhulu.
Popcru’s list of immediate demands to DCS included the transfer of all prison inmates under 15 years to secure care centres, as well as the release of prisoners who had been granted bail of less than R100 and those whose parole dates had expired. The memorandum also called for a 30% increase in the number of posts in the department.
While insisting on an end to the privatisation of prisons, the union also wanted the government to speed up the construction of new-generation prisons, owned and controlled by the state. Current communal prisons should be reconstructed to provide for single-cell accommodation, it stated.
According to Popcru, both departments were failing to implement a resolution dealing with transformation.
”Area managers use the matching and placing process to settle old scores with members,” read the memorandum to DCS.
In the Eastern Cape, transformation had been undone to a great extent because white people refused to be deployed to predominantly black areas.
Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) president Willie Madisha said white policemen and women should be deployed to black areas.
”This is one public service and all of us are part of it.”
There would be no transformation while those with the ”so-called skills” remained in Pretoria, and did not go to where the majority of the people needed their protection — the townships and rural areas.
In the memorandum handed to Les Xinwa, an adviser to Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula, Popcru accused the SAPS of ”sabotaging” the resolution that dealt with transformation.
”The SAPS is still struggling to rid itself of anti-transformation elements that are doing the service and society an untold harm.”
The union complained that services were often duplicated, particularly in the top levels, while efficiency at grass roots level was paralysed.
The memorandum cited nepotism in appointments, as well as ”frustrations and trauma amongst the foot soldiers who are the backbone of policing, resulting in (a) high rate (of) suicides and desertions”.
Madisha said that to protect South Africa’s democracy, policemen and women had to be satisfied.
”We say to you as management the days of dictatorship are over. The days of ‘skop, skiet en donner’ (kick, shoot and beat up) are over.”
Both memoranda called for a reply within 14 days.
Xinwa said he would fax the memorandum to Nqakula on Friday afternoon.
DCS Commissioner Linda Mti called on the Popcru leadership to come and meet his department’s management to try and resolve as many of the issues as possible. – Sapa