Earlier today, the Human Rights Watch, at the launch of its 2014 World Report issued a "warning" to the South African government, that human rights are taking a turn for the worst in the country.
They cited escalating police violence as the main reasons for the regression and raised serious concerns with the police's use of excessive force, especially in an election year, during which the organisation expects to see more community protests.
As the Ministry of Police, we view the manner in which police were assessed in this report, as generalizing and subjective. The fact of the matter is that each public protest takes a different dynamic, whether peaceful or violent.  This Human Rights Watch unfortunately somehow depicts an impression that South African Police Service (SAPS) responds to all public protests with the same approach and operational plan, thus creating a false assertion that all members of the SAPS are brutal. 

We wish to reiterate the point that, as the Ministry of Police, we are concerned when we hear about reports of police who abuse their powers.  We are equally concerned when we hear about police officers who are killed while responding to crime callouts.

One of the critical and fundamental changes around improving training is that henceforth all new entry level police members undergo basic crowd management training as part of their curriculum.

Since this process was initiated in April 2012, 1 761 Public Order Policing (POP) operational members have successfully undergone refresher training. An approximate of 2 340 operational members must still undergo this training.   This is primarily to establish an understanding of crowd management in all SAPS members and which will facilitate joint operations with other SAPS components and POP members. 

During the last intake which completed their training in March 2013, the new first responder training course was conducted to empower new police members to assess potential crowd management situations and understand the process of role function activation.

During the last financial year, 12 399 crowd-related incidents were responded to and successfully stabilized, including 10 517 peaceful incidents such as assemblies, gatherings and meetings.  Unfortunately, of these incidents, 1 882 were violent incidents and we were effected 3 680 arrests. 

As we have seen on many occasions, many protests have been accompanied by serious provocations, intimidations, public violence and even elements of criminality.  As expected, when police arrest the perpetrators at the scene, usually nobody claims responsibility for these actions as such rendering the investigations very difficult, particularly in securing convictions in courts.
One of the major challenges facing us is that the policing of public protests draws the police away from their normal policing activities and forces the police to redirect resources.  This can lead to gaps in normal policing which are sharpened when the police personnel deployed to the policing of such events are drawn from local police stations.

Whilst the police have a responsibility to police gatherings within the framework of the law, the Gatherings Act confers considerable responsibilities on conveners or organizers of events to ensure that such events are carried out in an orderly and peaceful manner.  Any contravention of this must result in the organizers facing criminal charges.

There is no prevalent culture of impunity within the police service.  We are a caring government and therefore there is no carte blanche that we give to our officers to kill innocent people who protest.  Admittedly, every police service has rotten apples within it and South Africa is no exception. However, the rotten apples are dealt with in terms of the relevant prescripts and applicable legislation.

Police officials who have committed crimes are arrested, charged and prosecuted.  The results are mixed, as some officials are convicted while others are acquitted.  Every police official knows that the consequences will be severe for those implicated in criminal acts of any kind.

The public is protected in various ways.  As the Ministry of Police, we further recognised the importance of oversight framework on police by strengthening this aspect through oversight laws in Parliament.  An independent directorate and a civilian secretariat were established early in South Africa’s democracy to deal with complaints against the police and to provide civilian oversight over the police.  The laws applicable to these institutions were updated and further modernised by Parliament in 2011.
We therefore urge stakeholders such as Human Rights Watch to provide an objective analysis of policing and further invite them to engage us on any given day, as we all work towards ensuring that people in South Africa, are and feel safe.

Ends

Zweli Mnisi
Spokesperson to the Minister of Police
Ministry of Police
Mobile: +27 (0)82 045 4024