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/ 22 January 2009
Finalist — Drivers of Change: Individual Award: Penny Steyn.
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/ 14 January 2009
The Scorpions have secured subpoenas against police officers, ordering them to surrender evidence in the Selebi case, a media report said on Wednesday
The DA on Friday called for an investigation into the claim that portions of a video tape seized by the president’s VIP officers were deleted.
The DA said on Wednesday the South African Police Service was incapable of holding unruly police officers accountable for intimidating motorists.
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/ 5 December 2008
The head of the police’s legal division — fingered for incompetence in a report — is being probed by Minister of Safety and Security Nathi Mthetwa.
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/ 18 November 2008
The SAPS has served ANC breakaway leader Mosiuoa Lekota with a notice that his bodyguards will be withdrawn, officials said on Tuesday.
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/ 9 September 2008
The South African Police Service (SAPS) on Tuesday dismissed as ”incorrect” reports that its restructuring process has stopped.
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/ 8 September 2008
Trade union Popcru said on Monday that the ”unilateral restructuring process” in the South African Police Service (SAPS) had been stopped.
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/ 5 September 2008
No police officers will lose their jobs in a restructuring process aimed at streamlining the force, the national police commissioner’s office says.
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/ 4 September 2008
The DA has raised concerns over the South African Police Service’s ability to undertake complex crime investigations.
Justice Department DG received a harsh rebuke from Constitutional Court judges this week over a challenge regarding the dissolution of the Scorpions.
There are more than 300 small-vessel launch sites and slipways around South Africa’s coastline that are not monitored by police.
The bullet-proof vests issued to police members are ”too bulky, heavy and impede movement”, DA leader Helen Zille said on Thursday.
Another ATM is bombed in Gauteng as a media report reveals that explosives stolen from gold mines are being sold on the black market.
Police and National Intelligence Agency leaders appear to be waging a war of attrition against the National Prosecuting Authority and the Scorpions.
Metro police officers will continue their protest outside their Johannesburg headquarters on Thursday while union bosses meet with city management.
Protesting metro police officers fired live ammunition at South African Police Service (SAPS) members in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
The disbanding of the Scorpions will protect corrupt and criminal politicians from prosecution, the deputy director of Public Prosecutions warned on Thursday. The Directorate of Special Operations, also known as the Scorpions, would lose its ability to independently investigate government officials if it was incorporated into the police, said Billy Downer, SC.
The recent xenophobic violence cannot be attributed to a single factor and is not necessarily the work of a so-called ”third force”, government spokesperson Themba Maseko said on Thursday. ”In some cases, there is some evidence of copy-cat activities in which criminals took advantage of the news story to conduct criminal acts,” he said.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the South African Police Service are hard at work repairing their relationship ahead of a planned merger with the Scorpions, NPA acting head Mokotedi Mpshe said on Wednesday. ”We’re focusing primarily on salvaging whatever relations there are,” Mpshe told reporters in Johannesburg.
The seven students expelled from the Mafikeng Campus of the North-West University (NWU) have been granted permission to continue with studies and examinations. Spokesperson Lester Mpolokeng said the seven students either expelled or suspended from the university would remain provisionally suspended.
A Somali community in Johannesburg on Thursday accused police of firing live ammunition at its members as more xenophobic attacks were reported in Gauteng and former Cabinet minister Kader Asmal questioned claims of ‘third force’ involvement in the attacks.
The deployment of the army to areas hit by xenophobic attacks was long overdue, opposition parties said on Wednesday after President Thabo Mbeki’s nod to South African National Defence Force ”involvement”. South African police say 42 people have been killed in violence in Johannesburg that has raged for more than a week and 16 000 have been displaced.
Thousands of refugees in and around Johannesburg faced another night filled with anxiety on Tuesday evening as xenophobic tensions and violence continued to spread through the province. The violence has so far claimed 24 lives and left up to 10 000 people seeking refuge in shelters across Gauteng.
As the sun set on another bloody day of xenophobic violence in Gauteng on Monday, at least 22 people were reported dead, many more injured and 217 arrested for fierce attacks on both foreigners and local residents living in the greater Johannesburg area. Aid organisations were assisting thousands of refugees at civic centres and police stations.
Private security companies should be given more powers so that they could contribute meaningfully to the fight against crime, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Monday. DA spokesperson on safety and security Dianne Kohler Barnard said private security companies should be granted the same powers as the police when carrying out arrests and seizures.
Bedlam erupted in the Kempton Park Regional Court on Thursday when three men accused of possession of illegal firearms staged a dramatic escape. The escape took place when the three suspects were taken to the court’s holding cells, presiding magistrate Eric Mhlari told the Mail & Guardian Online on Friday.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) believes that the Bill abolishing the Scorpions and amalgamating them into a police directorate will dramatically undermine the fight against crime, and against organised crime in particular. ”As such, the DA will do all in its power to ensure that the Bill does not become law,” the party said on Wednesday.
The Directorate of Special Operations, or the Scorpions, had another nail hammered into its coffin on Tuesday, with the tabling of the General Laws Amendment Bill in the National Assembly. The draft legislation, now headed for the committee stage, provides for the establishment of a new division in the South African Police Service.
The Law Society of South Africa on Friday called for an overhaul of the justice system to deal with crime in the country. Co-chairpersons Vincent Saldahna and CP Fourie said the scourge of crime needed a more holistic and serious solution, which included the proper training of police officers.
The majority of South Africans want the Scorpions to remain as a separate entity from the police, TNS Research Surveys said on Wednesday. Fifty-nine percent of South Africans said they felt the Scorpions should be separate in a survey conducted in February 2008 among 2 000 people.
An investigation into two northern KwaZulu-Natal men who were caught monitoring police radio frequencies has been launched, police said on Tuesday. Police spokesperson Captain Charmaine Struwig said the pair were caught on Newcastle Road in Ladysmith on Monday night but had not yet been arrested.