Statement by the Minister of Police: tabling of Annual Reports to Portfolio Committee on Police
1. Ministry organisationsl design
1.1 The Minister of Police is enabled in his duties by the Constitution of the Republic whose preamble states that, police services are to be provided throughout the national territory of the Republic to enable five key deliverables, which are;
- Ensure the safety and security of all persons and property in the national territory;
- Uphold and safeguard the fundamental rights of every person as guaranteed in Chapter 3 of the Constitution;
- Ensure cooperation between the Service and the communities it serves in combating of crime;
- Reflect respect for victims of crime and understanding of their needs, and
- Ensure effective civilian supervision over the Service
1.2 The Minister of Police has an overall responsibility for homeland security, policing, peace, stability, private security industry, private weapons management and firearms business.
- counter intelligence
- general overt and covert intelligence
- law and order policing – legislative and policy programme
- and expenditure issue
1.3 The Ministry has 6 departments/agencies that reports to it under specific legislation; these are;
1. Civilian Secretariat for the Police Service
2. Independent Police Investigative Directorate
3. Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority
4. Office of the DPCI Judge
5. National Forensic Oversight and Ethics Board (DNA Board)
6. Firearms Appeal Board
1.4 The Minister is further empowered by 17 pieces of legislation in the conduct of his/her responsibilities.
1.5 The Minister is further mandated to have a special and specific role under 34 inter-departmental legislation passed by this Parliament; these pieces of legislation often calls upon the departments under the Ministry to perform specific tasks to fulfil the law and legal requirements in South Africa’s governance.
These make the Ministry of Police the most highly burdened Ministry in the country and in need of key resources and parliament support.
2. Etablishment of budget
2.1 SAPS currently have 193 674 employees on the payroll. 150 956 are Police Act employees with 42 717 Public Service Act employees.
2.2 There are challenges in that Treasury has a reduction of SAPS wage bill by R800 million this year, plus a further R2.9 billion for 2018 – 2019.
2.3 SAPS budget is R87 billion, 79% of this goes to wage bill.
3. Observations relating to magement & operations in SAPS
3.1 Having stated a policy objective that crime fighting will be intelligence led, there are staffing and technological inadequacies in the Division of Crime Intelligence which has rendered the function non-responsive. The Division should be deployed at police station to cluster levels as well.
3.2 There are 402 personnel in the Detective Services Division. At least the requirement is around 2500.
3.3 Visible Policing also requires additional personnel under the current climate.
3.4 Organizational Development and Strategic Management are separated which is causing misalignment. The Ministry policy is to combine the two to close the gaps in coordination and soundness of research and development. The structure of SAPS and its divisions must be finalised in the short term.
3.5 SAPS is often not suited for arrangements with SITA, having identified bottlenecks and other accounting difficulties for our environment. Often, SAPS requirements are specialized security requirements that could be best handled internally.
3.6 The Minister does not have Delivery Agreements with SAPS Management – the new policy is to institute Delivery Agreements against the Performance Agreements signed with Accounting Officers. The Delivery Agreements will go a long way to monitor and have responsive oversight over the performance of each management personnel. This will deal with the material issues raised by the Auditor General in that there are no consequence management instruments in place.
4. SAPS management structure
4.1 SAPS has management that is top heavy. There are 35 Lt. Generals; 216 Major Generals and 664 Brigadiers. This is a contributing factor to the size of the wage bill, high head office costs resulting in resources not going to the ground where they are most needed.
4.2. Administration had a net overspending as a result of increased spending on compensation of employees and higher than planned cost-of-living increases were paid and certain functions received additional capacity that also contributed towards the increased spending, i.e. Program and Project Management, National Management Interventions and Integrity Management.
4.3. Division of Visible Policing had a net under-spending mainly from personnel losses. With regards to goods and services, the overspending is mainly as a result of spending on certain Criminal Justice System (CJS) capital projects that did not materialize as anticipated. Certain contracts being disputed or not awarded and tenders not being published by SITA. This also influences the need to engage with the Minister of Telecommunications as stated earlier.
4.4. Crime Intelligence Division had a total net overspending of R33, 1 million due to increased spending on compensation of employees and due to higher than planned cost-of-living increases which were paid. I have set out clear directives for CI on their management practices in particular the supply chain environment under the SSA account.
4.5. In year 2014/15 there were 3 material findings, these climbed to 9 in year 2015/16 and we have 2016/17 having 42 material findings.
4.6. Overall, the findings of the Auditor General point to police station level management deficiencies; this means the deficiencies are experienced at direct service delivery.
4.7. There is a need to pull Human Resource and Personnel Development closer to Organizational Development and Finance to deal with a host of mis-alignments in the organization as a whole. There is a silo approach in management and little strategic coordination.
5. Turnaround plan from Ministry level
5.1 I will be directing intervention on reduction of top-heavy structure at head office, which will include proposal to convert certain qualifying police stations to Major General level as we have done at OR Tambo International.
5.2 Provinces like Gauteng, KwaZulu Natal, Eastern Cape and Western Cape require an investigation on whether management could be regionalized wherein two Lt. Generals are deployed to manage the South and North (or other categorization) respectively. This would mean devolved resources to the crime hot spots and higher crime weighing areas.
5.3 To encourage police management to focus on Crime Phenomenon and Modus Operadi of crimes. This will assist in cutting the value chain of crime.
5.4 Pro-active planning on the big three new cities; Ekurhuleni, Witbank and Rustenburg is important to arrest criminality before it roots.
5.5 Cyber crime has shown South Africa to be extremely vulnerable. Focus should be redoubled in equipping SAPS to be adequate to the task.
5.6 There must be added efforts to encourage community participation in policing. Street committees and CPF’s are essential in weeding out potential vigilante activities, as police would always be involved. Engagement with Provinces and Municipalities will commence wherein they would be invited to play a role and appropriate funds for Community Safety Forums in particular.
5.7 The Ministry has not been involved in budgeting processes in the past. As policy, the Ministry would take a leading role in this regard.
5.8 Remove key delegated authority to enable Minister to have a closer and on time assessment on decisions made at management level.
5.9 Where legislation empowers Minister, this shall be restored back to Minister in particular Chapter 8, Regulations 24 of the South African Police Service Act, these changes shall be gazetted soon.
5.10 I have approved the SAP Management Action Plan to address the Auditor Generals findings and will be monitoring the plans 6 pillars closely to ensure success towards a clean audit within SAPS
6. Cvilian Secretariat for Police Service
6.1 As policy, the Ministry would engage with the Minister of Public Service to upgrade the Secretariat to a Direct General (DG) level department to enable it to properly attend to its constitutional responsibilities and those of the Acts.
6.2 There must be enhanced policy development and oversight and monitoring of policing functions and administration.
6.3 The DG would rank equal to the National Police Commissioner and be empowered with monitoring of service delivery and adherence to law and regulations.
6.4 The Secretariat received an unqualified report after a long time; the empowerment envisaged would strengthen their efforts to be better and responsive in the policy and monitoring front.
7. IPID
7.1 IPID requires full empowerment to operate in the environment. Police wield a lot of power and licence to remove rights of individuals, as such a robust and independent yet fully empowered and adequately funded IPID is a non-negotiable.
7.2 A work-study on the current budgetary difficulties would be undertaken and Parliament will be consulted in this regard.
8. The division of Crime intelligence (CI)
8.1 I address this issue as a separate issue due to its importance to our democracy. The Division has to function in accordance with the law and regulations. There are efforts directed at changing the environment to transform and win back public trust.
8.2 In the past 5 years, there have been 12 Divisional Commissioner and 10 different operational structures. At present, the structure being utilized is an adhoc structure due to Bargaining Council interdict on a new structure.
8.3 The Minister has instructed that a direct relationship between the Ministry and CI is essential to monitor and evaluate activities of the operatives which include potential misuse of power and resources.
8.4 In the past few months it would appear as though Parliament was misled on a number of instances in particular over vetting or security clearance within the entire SAPS and CI environment in particular.
8.5 Public Service Regulations enable an employee to be appointed pending a security vetting but this vetting is a condition of employment. Should the security vetting be negative and thus complicates the working environment, such an employee would have their employment terminated if no lower clearance could be granted in the categories available (top secret and secret).
8.6 I will provide evidence in close briefing in this regard when called upon.
8.7 The 4 areas of material findings on the SSA will be addressed and a closed briefing would be done in this regard. Action is being taken.
8.8 I have directed CI to a set of 26 specific directives with an Action Plan developed together with the Ministry to refocus CI to the tasks this Parliament has
authorized and place the SSA account to good corporate governance albeit with understanding of the covert nature of activities. These include correcting irregular promotions, taking action against employees accused of various infringements and other matters
9. National crime statistics results
9.1 The results have been submitted to Parliament within the timelines provided except that I have requested the Speaker via the Clerk of Papers to withhold the release until such time that cabinet processing of the results have been finalised.
9. 2 We envisage the release to be by 23rd October 2017. Cabinet will finalize its processing of the cabinet meeting of the 18 October 2017, starting with the cabinet cluster committee on 12th October 2017.
10. National Crime Prevention Strategy
10.1 The Secretariat has been directed by Minister to begin the process of reviewing the 1996 National Crime Prevention Strategy for purposes of updating all past national strategies in line with the new crime trends and global threats.
10.2 The review directive is motivated by the ever changing globalized world and the fact that it is now two decades later since a comprehensive review and update was undertaken on our National Crime Prevention Strategy
