The collapse of South African policing

by Ian Cameron

“So, how bad has the South African Police Service become?”. It’s a question people often ask me. I make it very clear that it's important not to create the impression that all members of the SAPS are bad. In fact, there are thousands of remarkable men and women that still wear the blue uniform. But, there are so many rotten apples in the police’s management structure, due to political appointments and interference as well as corruption, that most of the basic mandates and functions of the police are not met or completed.

To illustrate the rank criminality within the police one need not look further than an answer to a question asked in Parliament by Democratic Alliance (DA) shadow minister of police, Andrew Whitfield a few years ago. From the opposition benches, the politician asked how many police members were criminally charged between 2013 and 2021. The answer was shocking, yet sadly unsurprising – a total of 10,086 police officers were charged with serious offences that included murder, rape and assault during that period.

To make matters worse, the SAPS has arguably become one of the biggest firearm suppliers to criminals in the country. According to the police’s own statistics, between 2005 and 2017 more than 26,000 firearms were lost or had been stolen from their members.

Minister of Police Bheki Cele told parliament that in 2019, the SAPS has lost more than 10-million rounds of ammunition. Director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, Mark Shaw, sets out in great detail the extent of the police’s supply of arms to criminals in his book, Give us more guns. It reads like fiction, like many South African stories, but it is not.

Then, there is the staggeringly high crime rate. South Africans are witness to at least 84 murders per day, or, about 3.5 murders per hour according to the latest quarterly crime stats that the South African Police Service released in February 2023 (third quarter of 2022/23 from October 1 to December 31, 2022). According to the latest crime statistics analysis by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), a staggering 9 out of 10 murder cases went unsolved.

In his piece for ISS Today David Bruce, an independent researcher and ISS consultant, wrote “The latest crime statistics are cause for concern – especially murder figures, which are the most reliable indicator of serious violent crime levels. Since their low point in 2011-12, the number of murders has increased by 62% in 2021-22 – reaching 25 181 deaths. The 2021-22 per capita rate of 42 murders per 100 000 is the highest since 2003-04, when the rate was 43 per 100 000. Figures for April to September 2022 indicate that rates in 2022-23 are even higher”.

These numbers clearly demonstrate how the SAPS is completely failing in its constitutional mandate to “prevent, combat and investigate crime” and thus safeguard citizens and their property.

The SAPS has become a top-heavy structure: while experiencing a severe shortage of training instructors and knowledgeable leaders, it has over 600 brigadiers and over 200 generals. These senior officers cost South African taxpayers at least R2.2 billion per year. That means, that despite the poor performance of leaders in the service, medals are still handed out like sweets to politically connected individuals. You’d be forgiven for believing that police officers who don't detect and prevent crime have a better chance of promotion than if they actually fulfilled their mandate.

To better understand how flawed the management structure of the SAPS really is, it is helpful to take a look at the last national commissioner who was fired from the top post, Khehla Sitole.

Sitole has been implicated in the ANC’s 2017 Elective Conference vote buying scandal, which involved the alleged procurement of a police grabber worth R45 million. The alleged corruption and wrongdoing in this deal extends beyond just the SAPS, and involves other departments too. Furthermore the then police minister and current ANC secretary general, Fikile Mbalula, has also been fingered in the deal.

For over four years now the Property Control and Exhibit Management System (PCEM) has been switched off. It was switched off by the service provider called FDA because of non-payment. This basically means that the SAPS lost access to over 8 million pieces of evidence that couldn't be referenced with new evidence in the future, essentially paralysing forensic investigation.

The firearm permit system (FPS) was also switched off for the same reason. This meant that members could check out firearms and ammunition at station level by simply signing a piece of paper and handing it back after a shift. This left massive room for wrongdoing and for potentially illicit trade of not only police firearms and ammunition but also the abuse of firearms and ammunition that had been seized in criminal investigations and stored as exhibits.

There are thousands of examples of how the SAPS has failed victims of violent crime. Take Chantel Makwena as an example; a little five year old girl that was brutally raped, mutilated and murdered in 2019 and then dumped in a dilapidated pit toilet under dirt and bricks. The DNA report for her rape and murder was only completed two years after the incident. Her killer was only arrested in July 2021 and was on the loose for an additional two years because of the inefficient police system’s poor ability to simply process DNA.

If he had been arrested in time this would have prevented a 50 year old female from falling victim to him and being raped. 26-year-old Ricardo Grysman is now in prison, after being successfully convicted, but is this enough?

I work with so many cases throughout South Africa, and our team doesn't go through one week where blatant police negligence doesn't cause major cause for concern. It seems that the deterioration, or rather the destruction of the SAPS, is becoming faster and faster. In fact if we do not find alternatives the destruction that we will see and experience in the coming years will be worse than ever. With the current murder rate, South Africa will have at least 28,000 people killed in the next financial year, with a further 30,000 murders within the next 12 months.

Unfortunately, there has been no attempt by the South African government, the minister of police or the management of the SAPS to change the situation at ground level.

If it were not for good cops still hanging in there, despite the stress and the dire circumstances that they work in, the situation would already have been far worse. I would like to salute those members that have stuck it out despite the challenges that they face every single day. It's important that communities organise themselves in strong community safety structures, that can help to not only prevent crime but to also assist in combating crime and reacting to it as it happens.

South African legislation leaves more than enough room for communities to organise themselves. Outside of party politics, that is the only way that communities can really safeguard themselves. We have a lot of work to do in the coming years, but most of us simply have no other alternative but to make it work here in South Africa.

The most viable alternative available is strong relationships between community safety structures, the South African Police Service, other law enforcement authorities and the private security industry. If those stakeholders work together well on the ground, where crime hits the hardest, we will have safer streets in the country.