SA distrusts SAPS - DA
2012-11-25 14:35
Johannesburg - The SA Police Service is mismanaged by a "top-heavy, frequently inexperienced hierarchy" created by disgraced former police commissioner Bheki Cele, the Democratic Alliance said on Sunday.
"The ANC has made no change to its disastrous system of parachuting unqualified non-SAPS members into the position of national police commissioner, even after one was jailed and the other dismissed in disgrace," DA MP Dianne Kohler-Barnard said at the party's federal congress in Boksburg.
"This has led to a collapse of the public trust in the SAPS as a whole..."
She said shortages of police equipment and vehicles were the outcome of multi-million rand "parties" held time and again "under the current minister".
Kohler-Barnard said the lack of policy creation by Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa was the root of the operational problems.
Removal of minister
This coupled with the "re-militarisation" of police and the lack of public order policing led to the death of 34 miners in Marikana in August, she said.
The DA resolved to continue pushing for the removal of Mthethwa, "whose reign has been so utterly ineffective".
Ther party resolved to continue fighting for the appointment of a career police officer as national police commissioner.
All DA members were urged to report police corruption and ineptitude when it is brought to their attention.
With regards to crime statistics, the party resolved to ask that farm murder statistics be reintroduced in the SAPS annual report.
Kohler-Barnard said South Africans working on farms were being murdered at an unprecedented rate.
"Despite becoming increasingly brutal, and with no real motive, murders on farms are not treated as priority crimes," she said.
"Murders of ANC politicians are treated as priority murders."
The DA further resolved to ask national police commissioner Riah Phiyega to make true her statements that specialised rural protection units be introduced.
- SAPA
