Gauteng minister of community safety Firoz Cachalia wants the sword to fall on the Booysens policemen shown taking bribes on the South African Broadcasting Corporation televison programme Special Assignment on Tuesday night.
”We are expecting nothing less than firm and decisive action from the area and provincial commissioners,” Cachalia told The Star newspaper on Tuesday night.
National police spokesperson Phuti Setati said Gauteng police commissioner Perumal Naidoo would be investigating the matter.
The television footage showed police allegedly taking bribes from illegal immigrants in a police station of Booysens, a suburb in the south of Johannesburg.
The report said the police had turned the arrests into a ”lucrative racket”.
On Tuesday night, according to The Star, the police nabbed by the footage were still on duty.
Naidoo was so infuriated by a special screening of the footage, that he stormed out of the SABC studios, without saying anything.
He also would not comment on why the men on tape were still at work, and had not been suspended.
Naidoo’s spokesperson Superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht, said nobody had been suspended because ”these are just allegations”.
”The commissioner is not willing to say anything further,” she said.
Safety and security ministry spokesperson Trevor Bloem said an investigation would be launched.
”The police have been alerted to what is happening and will conduct their own investigation; that is what you will expect from the police,” he said.
According to the footage, the policemen took R300 bribes from relatives to ”bail out” illegal immigrants.
In a startling revelation, an attorney at the Wits Law Clinic, Abeda Bhamjee, said allegations of bribery were common.
Another legal expert interviewed on the programme said this was happening at police stations all over the Johannesburg area. It was estimated that illegal immigrants handed over about R90-million to corrupt officials each year. – Sapa