A photograph recently appeared in Johannesburg’s daily newspapers of overweight police officers working out in a communal gym. The cops were laughing, but it was a pitiful sight.
The men and women in the picture, sweating and puffy, are the ones we depend on to save lives. They are the ones we trust to protect and to serve our communities, property and homes.
These overweight cops personify the South African Police Service today.
As we report this week, an investigation by former commissioners has found the SAPS to be a sick, defective organisation where almost nothing works.
These are not the claims of an opposition party or a think tank, but of people with decades of crime-fighting experience, asked by National Commissioner Jackie Selebi to diagnose what ails his organisation. Their findings are telling.
There is no central crime prevention plan for police stations, the restructuring of police units leaves members frustrated and confused, our detectives are not trained and junior investigators sit with 150 cases at a time.
Add to that the scandalous salaries being paid to cops, a breakdown of discipline and the lack of cars, desks and pens. Does one need to look much further for an explanation of our deplorable crime rate?
South Africans are being killed, raped and assaulted in absolute numbers on a par those of India (with a population of one billion) and Russia (140-million). It is true that we are killing our own friends and family and that the police’s options to intervene in our houses and Âbackyards are limited.
But the other side of the story is just as ugly; organised syndicates of highly sophisticated gangs are taking over large parts of our streets and lives, robbing us of our hard-earned goods and freedoms.
Of little help is the fact that Selebi is on trial for being part of an organised crime syndicate. The courts will decide his innocence or guilt.
The fact is that the SAPS under Selebi has hit rock bottom. Fourteen of his former colleagues say so.
How does one fix the police? We don’t have all the answers. But we do know that Selebi’s contract expires at the end of June and that it will be up to President Thabo Mbeki to make one of his last senior appointments.
To extend Selebi’s contract while he is awaiting trial is surely not an option. What the SAPS now needs is a strong, independent-minded leader to get rid of the dead wood and inject fresh ideas into a tired, overweight body.
Pravin Gordhan is one such person. His time at the South African Revenue Service has been a huge success and he is clearly destined for bigger things. But there are also other South Africans who have showed the way with their visionary leadership styles and talents to inspire and achieve — people like foreign affairs Director General Ayanda Ntsaluba and Transnet CEO Maria Ramos.
It is the duty of Mbeki to appoint the best person available to turn around our own ship of shame, the SAPS. South Africa cannot afford another Jackie Selebi.
It’s not too late for SABC
The ANC’s Polokwane conference has had dramatic effects, positive and otherwise. Among the positive is the fact that the carte blanche the executive arm of government exercised over the citizens, Parliament and the party itself has been revoked. Parliamentarians have now found their voice on a range of issues and are getting stuck into underperfoming government departments with unfamiliar vigour.
But when it comes to the hitherto unheard of and legally meaningless no-confidence motion that ANC parliamentarians passed on the board of the SABC, the DA is not alone in smelling a rat.
At Polokwane, the ANC, Cosatu and the SACP announced that they did not approve of the current board and unsuccessfully tried to block its appointment by President Thabo Mbeki.
They were right to complain: Luthuli House had interfered with Parliament’s list and summarily included the names of four people who had not been recommended by the portfolio committee on communications. But needless to say, parliamentarians, then under the firm control of Thabo Mbeki, did little about this invasion of their domain.
It is not too late to correct the mistake, but the convoluted fashion in which ANC MPs handled it is not the way. Insisting that all the board members fly to Cape Town this week for a public dressing-down and the passing of a hollow motion against them smacks of political expedience.
The Mail & Guardian supports the re-opening of the process of selection of a representative, skilled, independent board that does not owe its allegiance to a faction of the ruling party. This, however, should not mean, in simplistic terms, the replacement of Mbeki’s team with Zuma’s team. Mbeki should accept that there is such deep mistrust of this board that it cannot fulfil its function. To quote his opening address to Parliament this year, it cannot be business as usual.
In that spirit, he must let the process begin again and if he won’t, Parliament must find a credible way to fix the mess it allowed itself to make.