Experts urge urgent reform of the South African Police Service

SOUTH Africa’s police service requires urgent reform, with experts calling for a shift toward a more professional, skilled, and technology-driven force capable of tackling complex crime.

According to Gareth Newham, head of justice and violence prevention at the Institute for Security Studies, the current policing model is outdated and no longer fit for purpose. What's needed he says, are officers who can work with data, learn new skills, think critically, and apply modern investigative methods. 

Since 1995, SAPS has focused on deploying large numbers of uniformed, low-skilled officers to perform basic duties, based on the flawed belief that police visibility alone reduces crime, said Newham.  

“What we need is a policing model which is much more professional, a far greater proportion of its staff must be highly skilled professionals who can operate technology, learn new skills, work with data, think innovatively and solve crimes, partnerships with the private sector, private security, other analysts, civil society."

Newham added that the police’s effectiveness is not about resources, but rather about skills and capabilities. 

“The mindset that all we need to do is add more money and more people to the SAPS and that will somehow get on top of the crime problem is a false assumption. It will not work; it has not worked anywhere else. And what we need to start thinking about is how we reduce the size of the organisation so that we have far greater, better-paid, highly skilled professionals, with far lower levels of corruption and waste, to target the criminals that are committing most of the serious harm.

“The police do not have to police all 62 million people in South Africa. They need to make sure that they can identify at least the 50,000 people who commit the most serious violent crime, organised crimes that are kidnappings, hijackings, and so forth. So, until we get that model right, we won’t see big improvements anytime soon.”

He said Senzo Mchunu the Minister of Police, understands this and is undertaking several initiatives to try to modernise, improve, and professionalise the SAPS. 

Major General Johan Booysen, the former KwaZulu-Natal head of Detective Services and Hawks, who now heads investigations at Fidelity Security Services, said the performance of the police  must be evaluated against the backdrop of other murder cases that go unsolved. 

“Fewer than 10% of murder case investigations culminate in a court conviction. Considering the murder rate in South Africa, it can be calculated that in approximately 20,000 murder cases per year, the perpetrators never face justice. If one calculates it over the past 10 years and excludes the previous years, it means that over 200,000 murderers are walking among us!” Booysen said.

He added that the vast majority of murder and GBV cases are allocated to overburdened and oftentimes ill-equipped detectives. Exacerbating these challenges is the fact that detectives in general lack the skills and resources to investigate cases successfully. Very few of these cases are ever solved.

“The causes are systemic. Poor leadership, appointment of commanders who themselves lack the basic skill to give guidance, lack of training, no mentorship programmes, no financial incentives to become a detective, poor discipline, corruption, etc, ultimately culminate in an inefficient and ineffective detective service,” Booysen said.

He added that the systematic challenges undermine and inhibit the SAPS’s ability to integrate different technologies at multiple levels during complex investigations. The detective service’s budget should also be increased to get them out of the quickmire.

The SAPS’s detective service is experiencing a crisis. Unless urgent structural and policy reforms, including a comprehensive overhaul of the detective component within SAPS, take place, I predict that the problem will get exponentially worse, Booysen said.

He added that in many instances, private investigators have to step up to the plate and assist police investigators.

“The elements that require particular priority attention are, to consider incentivising members to apply to become detectives, i.e. financial allowances, utilising technology for training such as online courses, implementing a mentorship program as part of manager’s key performance indicators and career pathing planning, and upward mobility opportunities, within the detective component,” he said.

Professor Nirmala Gopal, a senior criminology lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the Ministry of Police should ensure that all citizens have equal access to justice and a safe and secure environment.

“Indeed, with additional resources, crime levels are bound to decrease. Adequate resources for me mean soft and hard resources. The soft ones would be skills, ability, and commitment from law enforcement to reduce crime in our country. 

“Additionally, it would mean holding each other accountable and ensuring that while on duty, we focus all our efforts on the vision of SAPS, which is broadly to keep South Africa safe and secure. The harder resources would mean more SAPS members in hot spot areas and, on a general note, greater police presence and visibility,” Gopal said.

She added that there is a need to increase satellite police stations and express courts to deal decisively and expediently with GBV perpetrators. 

“Far greater psychosocial support will go a long way if we want to empower our women and girl children to free themselves from abusive situations,” Gopal said.

National Police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said that working closely with all stakeholders in the fight against crime is key to solving cases, eye-witnesses, and various other stakeholders play a significant role. 

“Every GBVF case is a high-profile case. The only difference is that the media chooses which case it gives attention to. Many cases are solved efficiently, and the media does not give attention to them. For example, a taxi boss killer was apprehended minutes after he shot and killed Lefa Matemane in Midrand (on June 04), it didn’t take a day. It took less than three hours.

“The SAPS has various units that work together to solve cases, including intelligence, cyber crime unit, Hawks, Tactical Operations Management Section (TOMS), and organised crime, etc,” she said.

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