The government has politicised policing to the detriment of South Africans, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday.
”Far from removing policing from the party political arena, this government has actually aggravated the politicisation of policing to the detriment of the safety of its citizens,” he wrote in his weekly newsletter on the DA website.
Leon referred to an article in this week’s Financial Mail, which called for the fight against crime to be taken out of the party political arena.
Among other things, the article said ”it should be clear by now that crime is not simply government’s ‘fault’ … political point-scoring is useless”.
Leon said the article was breathtaking in its naiveté and risible in its conclusion.
The decision to take an African National Congress political functionary and diplomat with no background in policing or systems management, Jackie Selebi, and catapult him into the number one policing job in South Africa, is intensely political.
”His lamentable failure in this post speaks for itself. But let no one suggest that Commissioner Selebi is anything other than a politician masquerading as a police officer.”
Also, the failure to control crime from a national level and the decision to starve the provinces and the provincial ministers and commissioners of any real authority over policing are political.
The government refuses to tolerate any variation from the national norm, and ignores the experience of United States police officials, who have significantly reduced crime by implementing various prevention methods in response to different local conditions.
”Look at the statistics. We boast that murder has declined by 16% over the last five years, whereas in a similar period in New York City, the murder rate collapsed by 76%, rape dropped by 48%, assault by 61%, robbery by 80% and car crime by 88%.
”That is a real achievement — achieved through painstaking policing, innovative techniques, massive expenditure and hiring police chiefs who knew their business better than their politics,” Leon said.
Another utterly political decision by government in respect of crime and policing has been not to prioritise it.
”Just look at the facts. The police are continuously short of equipment. Every police station I visit is critically short of personnel or motor vehicles, or even body armour.
”The fact that the fight against crime in South Africa is completely subordinated to the politics of transformation, racial bean-counting and affirmative action means that it is deeply politicised,” he said.
In addition, for entirely political reasons and again to the detriment of crime-ravaged communities, Selebi took it upon himself to deny the public their right to know more about where violent crime was occurring most by prohibiting the police from publishing crime statistics.
”The government enthusiastically supported Selebi in this outrageous act of censorship and notwithstanding the constitutional imperatives, continues to withhold the crime statistics that were previously updated and published every three months.”
Finally, it is an entirely political point and a very accurate one, to indicate, as the Financial Mail did, that it is ”difficult to normalise this very sick and damaged society”.
However, once again, the American experience indicated that overall economic and social forces, such as unemployment or poverty, usually mattered less than the quality of the criminal justice systems.
”That is not to say that our history is not important. But while you cannot change it, you certainly can rectify and make the criminal justice system, the courts of law and police force far more efficient and more terrifying in their reach by increasing the rates of arrest and conviction,” Leon said. — Sapa