Programme Directors;
Deputy Minister of Police, Ms M. Sotyu;
Premier of the Free State, Mr A. Magashule;
Free State MEC for Police, Roads and Transport, Mr B. Kompela;
Executive Mayor of Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality, Mr T. Manyoni;
SAPS Free State Provincial Police Commissioner, Lieutenant General K. Sithole;
SAPS Senior Management and representatives present;
Representatives from other Government Departments present;
Representatives from Business, CPFs, NGOs and Academic Fraternities;
Members of the Media;
Ladies and gentleman;
It is with a deep sense of appreciation and humility to be afforded an opportunity to address and engage with you at this important summit.
Let us perhaps commence our address with an observation we have articulated on various platforms, that crime is a scourge that respects nobody; it negatively affects people across gender, race and religion. As such it is a societal challenge that requires societal response.
What this translates to is that our society, together with its governance institutions, must unite in action and engage in a concerted and sustained effort aimed at ensuring a progressive reduction in crime levels.
In an effort to realise this objective, as the Ministry of Police we took a conscious effort to interact, work with the broader partners and other organs of society. We recognise that it is fundamental to improve social participation and dialogue in developing our country’s safety and security vision, plans and programmes.
For this reason, almost on a weekly basis we are out meeting with communities, not because there are problems, but as part of our community-policing philosophy of entrenching police-community relations.
Such community programmes also help us to tap onto the collective wisdom of all the people of our land to enhance existing crime-prevention programmes and seek innovative and creative solutions to challenges of crime and safety. A summit like this provides such an opportunity.
Nature of violence in South Africa
In dealing with crime, we are confronted with this serious challenge of a violent nature of crime. This is not a narrow reflection but it seems to be a pattern across society.
We are pleased to learn that amongst the summit attendees, we have academics and researchers and would urge you to scientifically probe this worrying phenomenon. Through your intervention and analysis, we can begin to tap into this societal trend of seemingly, resolving challenges through violence.
Our view has always been that the battle against crime cannot be separated from the war on want. We believe that the majority of those involved in crime are propelled by greed and extreme sense of selfishness. As researchers, this is one area we believe you can expand on, by providing analysis and empirical evidence to dispute misconceptions that only poor people commit crime.
The police derive their mandate from the Constitution of the Republic, which contains the whole chapter dedicated to Human Rights. This chapter outlines the rights and responsibilities of citizens. Every institution of the democratic state is expected to enforce the Constitution and the police are no exception to this. Police must see themselves as the enforcers of the law and not the law itself.
In this regard, our approach must speak to a number of fundamental areas which we wish to outline to this Summit.
1. Policy Approach
There are a number key policy interventions that we have and are making and these include:
- In 2011, we also introduced a new Public Order Policing Policy which clearly speaks to what is expected from the police when policing the very difficult area of public protest and action.
- The Ministry is also in the last lap of finalising the White Paper on Policing. This paper clearly spells out what a professional police institution must address and look like. This paper is being taken down to local police station commanders to ensure that the police understand the policy basis for policing in South Africa.
- Last year we started work on a policy which is aimed at clarifying the role we expect the police to play when carrying out their duties. This policy will speak to all aspects required including supervision, training, and even equipment required in carrying out community orientated policing and minimum use of force requirements.
- We have also over the last two years focused on a Ten-Point Plan that we believe must be effectively implemented. We have now started to engage not only senior managers but also local police stations commanders because we recognise that the message needs to be heard and understood at a grass roots level in the institution.
2. Regulatory Environment
Addressing the regulatory environment entails dealing with both the legislations and prescripts that govern policing. In this regard the following are in progress:
- The Review of the SAPS Act which will come to Parliament within the next few months must address professionalising the police and making accountability structures more pronounced.
- Over the last year, we have identified some areas related to our disciplinary codes and practices that need to be improved and are currently being addressed. To this end, we also began engagements with policing unions as we seek their partnerships and support in our endeavours of professionalising the police. Inevitably, we believe this will send a clear message that they will also not tolerate criminality even by their own members.
- The SAPS Code of Conduct is an excellent code; however the Code of Conduct within SAPS needs to be elevated. All SAPS members need to understand and adhere to this code and they need to understand (an indeed experience) the consequences of violating this Code of Conduct.
- Our SAPS Standing Orders and National Instructions need to be aligned to our policies and made accessible and understandable to members. This alignment and simplification must be implemented before the end of this year.
However transformation of the police cannot just focus on policy and legislation but must also address a number of different aspects that deal with policing.
3. Training and Recruitment
We have improved our recruitment processes and have bench-marked these with some of the leading police departments worldwide. However in implementing the actual criteria it is important to find mechanisms where the communities are able to assist us in finding ways to identify elements that should not be recruited.
With regard to training, immediately after 1994 we placed considerable emphasis in our curriculum on human rights. However as the needs of policing increased and changed, this aspect of training may not have been elevated to the required and appropriate level. We have now commenced a process of relooking the whole process and are engaging with human rights institutions, like the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) regarding both the substance and quality of this training.
4. Developing a Change Management Strategy:
After 1994, significant emphasis was placed on transformation of the police and significant in road have been made in this regard. However one of the areas we have identified for more emphasis is the need to incorporate our approach to transformation into an effective change management strategy.
Such a strategy will look at changing attitudes in the police. This is being worked on as we speak. Within this process adequate attention must be paid to police culture, leadership building and succession planning and the need for protective and resilience building strategies.
5. Address Employee Health and Wellness (EHW)
Policing is a difficult duty. Police are required on the one hand to protect human rights and on the other hand they are encouraged to be tough on crime and criminals.
As South Africans have become angrier about crime, the police have often retreated into a defensive position, which further isolates them from society and their mandate. Police members have also suffered exposure to repeated traumatic events with little to mitigate the effects on themselves and on the performance of their duties and the responsibilities of their private lives.
The manner in which humans respond to danger can be managed in either healthy or unhealthy ways. Unhealthy responses to danger become dangerous to policing and result in negative resilience. The worse the exposure, the more it impacts on amongst others organisational culture, management practice and team dynamics. Distress and poor emotional health in police members is then inextricably linked to, everyday (that is, not life threatening) workplace stressors.
Police trauma and personal challenges often go unmarked or are inappropriately noted, thus often times, the relationship between the police and the citizens of South Africa becomes ever more fragile and hostile. This in return exacerbates police defensiveness and aggression towards innocent citizens and criminals alike and the objectives of democratic policing are blurred.
To address this we have now begun a review and approaches of our EHW services within SAPS. As the police leadership we have now begun to:
- Systematic thinking and engagements with SAPS Top Management with regard to the EHW programmes and a mapping of the vision and strategy of the EHW.
- EHW needs to make use of both internal and external stakeholders to assist in this mapping and the implementation of EHW programmes.
- Briefing and debriefing of SAPS officials is crucial and we need to find ways of facilitating such processes in an organisation the size of SAPS. We need to look at what works and what does not work in this regard.
- The EHW should become an active contributor and participant of the whole recruitment and training process.
- EHW needs to put more emphasis on anger management and the need to understand the cause of anger which seems to be falling off-side from the SAPS as well as the impact of cross-cutting problems e.g. family life on police officers including the culture of the community they serve.
6. Management and accountability
We are strengthening our internal accountability mechanisms at all levels including improved internal assessments through the National Inspectorate and Internal Audit. We are also going to focus sparely on leadership skills and development with SAPS.
We also have over the past few weeks acted swiftly in suspending police officers involved in criminal activities. Going forward we need to keep this pressure up and ensure that all criminal acts regardless of the publicity they receive result in suspensions. This is important not only in sending a message to police on the ground but also ensure ensuring that actions have consequences.
7. Oversight of the police
In 2011, we focused considerable attention on improving legislation and the institutional capacity of civilian oversight of the police. Now we need to focus on whether we have the right capacity to ensure the effectiveness of this oversight.
8. Encouraging Professionalism
We are in the process of developing a programme that will encourage and re enforce positive behaviour and seek to discourage bad behaviour. This will involve initiating a campaign supported by systems and mechanisms that will encourage SAPS officials themselves to report bad behaviour and to encourage professionalism.
We will also be engaging with NGOs and various civic organisations about extending the initiatives which encourage community members to report both good and bad behaviour and were good behaviour is seen to be rewarded while bad behaviour discouraged.
9. Smarter Policing
The unfortunate incident in Daveyton highlighted how important technology can be in identifying unlawful behaviour. To this end, as the Minister I have instructed that we look into how technology can be implemented in key areas such as cameras in police vehicles and police cells. This will then not only act as a deterrent but also assist where the police are involved in criminal behaviour.
10. Concerted efforts in reducing violence against women, children and elderly
Violence against women, children and the elderly remain a sore point for our efforts of crime-reduction. Accordingly, when we were given this responsibility to head this portfolio, we set ourselves a task of understanding why there were no specialised units within the police to deal with the heinous crimes committed against women and children?
When senior police officials could not provide adequate answers to the question posed above, we then took a decision in 2009 to re-establish the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit.
The correctness of the decision we took in re-establishing the FCS units has begun to bear progress. This is indicated in the major victories that this unit has managed to score over the last two years, these include:
- In the cases where it involves the children under the age of eighteen, the unit has secured convictions that resulted in total of 10 345 years for those criminals. In the same age group, it has managed to secure 175 life sentences for these crimes.
- In cases where it involves victims that are eighteen years and older, the units has secured convictions that resulted in total of 10 854 years of imprisonment. In the same age category it has managed to secure 131 life sentences.
In the new police stations that we build and those that are refurbished, we ensure that there are special dedicated areas for the victims of such crimes. A working relationship with the Judiciary has been established to have such cases prioritised. The important struggle we must continue to wage, is to end violence against women, is a critical part of the historic effort to change the power relations in our society.
11. Police killings
We would also like to utilise this platform to raise sharply, the killings of our police officers. In July 2011, the police leadership convened a Summit Against Attacks on and killing of Police officials. In essence our objective was to seek solutions from across all sectors of society on what needs to be done to eradicate these killings. The response and support was overwhelming but we have now seen this phenomenon rearing its ugly head in the recent times.
We are now making once again, making a clarion call to all in society to mobilise and support our officers. After all our policing philosophy is primarily embedded in the close cooperation between police all spheres of the community. We therefore commend the Free State government for your efforts through partnerships, to work with us in curbing police killings.
12. Strengthen inter-governmental approach in Free State
Whilst the causes of crime are complex and diverse, it is acknowledged that there are a host of factors which impact on crime. These include inadequate access to basic services such as housing, education and health; social services as well as unemployment.
One of the challenges which we believe the summit must address is the whole aspect of disjointed approaches around crime prevention. At times whilst we all share similar objectives in terms of fighting crime, yet our efforts are not coordinated in a most efficient manner. We cannot be at opposing ends when we are supposed to be one in approach.
We are aware that the police have been in the media recently regarding certain members’ actions. We need to state upfront that we find the behaviour of certain individuals in this regard unacceptable. We have been forthright in condemning such actions. This should not be a reflection of the entire institution and we need to recognize that the majority of police officers are dedicated officials.
Conclusion
A lot of progress in the fight against crime has been noted in the past four years. This progress, to a large extent can be attributed to the contribution of different partners from different spheres, who all share a common vision.
Despite all these interventions that we have outlined above, we can be bold in stating that a lot of good work is being done in all areas. The consistent downward trend of crime statistics bears testimony to this fact. Nevertheless, we need to do much more. We therefore applaud Premier Magashule and his provincial executive for convening this gathering to find innovative ideas in the fight against crime.
The citizens of this province await with interest the outcomes of this summit. South Africans from all walks of life wait with keen interest what transpires from this summit. They require actions, not words. A time for talk shops must be thing of the past – what we require is more action and less talk.
I want to close my contribution by a quote from the Algerian revolutionary who said the following “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it”. We dare betray our mission, of ensuring that South Africans are and feel safe.
I thank you.
