The Ministry of Police and the South African Police Service (SAPS) management are in possession of a report on police killings, whether on or off-duty, various training models and mechanisms to improve police safety. This is in contrast to an article published by Pretoria News (1 July 2011) this morning headlined: “Cop killing dossier vanishes.”
The Minister, Nathi Mthethwa has also noted this unbalanced and misleading article creates a negative impression that the ministry and the SAPS management have no clue in terms of the statistics on police killings. It also states “report on saving officers’ lives gone while a cop is killed every two days.”
How bizarre! In a department with over 200 000 police officers, indeed if a police officer is killed every two days, South Africa would not be having any police officers left. This is an exaggeration of fact that is sensational and devoid of the truth. In fact it has potential to create unwarranted anxiety not only amongst the SAPS but the whole country. The fact that this story is published a day after we announced an upcoming Summit Against Police killings, inviting broader stakeholders, including Pretoria News to work with us tackling this issue, smacks of a smear campaign to discredit the summit before it even happens.
To provide a better perspective of this story, it is perhaps important to provide some background. The reporter, Graeme Hosken, phoned me (Zweli Mnisi) as the ministry’s spokesperson, yesterday late afternoon enquiring about whether the ministry is possession of such a report. At no point did the reporter request proof of this report nor follow up, something a credible reporter would do when in doubt of any information.
Because I needed to accurately verify my facts, I undertook to get back to him urgently and within ten minutes I reverted to the reporter with a response. I intentionally sent the reporter an SMS precisely to ensure that I do not get misquoted. The SMS I sent to the reporter (16h46, 30 June 2011) read as follows: “Hi Graeme, the Minister had the report or information, what he tasked the Secretariat of Police to do was to also reach out to some of the people who were involved in drafting this report, in order to thoroughly and intensively get an understanding of some of the challenges, issue and recommendations. That’s why amongst others Institute for Security Studies (ISS) was approached.”
To my shock when I read the newspaper this morning, the part on the Minister being in possession of the report and information, had been, it would seem deliberately omitted. Upon contacting the reporter he replied via SMS, quote: “When I sent through the story I included the entire sms! I will be in office in an hour and take up the matter with the chief sub editor and editor!”
The ministry finds such reporting very misleading, unethical and a compromise of journalistic principles. We do not expect this reporter or Pretoria News to be our Public Relations agency. What we expect from them is balanced, objective and reporting; surely that is not too much asking on our part?
The Minister has accordingly instructed that we take this matter with the Pretoria News Editor and the South African National Editors Forum today.
Enquiries:
Zweli Mnisi
Cell: 082 045 4024
Ministry of Police and SAPS management in possession of statistics on killings of police officers by criminals
