Lack of training behind SAPS brutality
According to the Sunday Independent, between 2000 and 2004 four people were killed by police during demonstrations in South Africa and in the last three weeks alone, six people suffered the same fate at the hands of the police in Relela, and Bolebodu in Limpopo, Durban Deep in Roodepoort and Mothutlung in Brits. Earlier in the week, police minister Nathi Mthethwa stepped up to defend his officers, saying they were well-trained and that training had been benchmarked with some of the developed nations of the world, but is this really the case?
According to Rudolph Zinn, Unisa School of Police Practice professor, it’s not.
Zinn believes that police officers at police stations nationally need to be trained in crowd control and public order policing, otherwise these police brutality cases will keep occurring.
“Over the last number of years, the number of protest actions increased quite considerably. So did the number of violent protests,” said Zinn.
“We will definitely see in the run-up to elections an increase in service delivery protests.
“It’s part of the politics and some of the people who engage in service delivery protests have genuine concerns.”
Police, however, needed to understand how to deal with each of the confrontations, said Zinn in a report in the Sunday Independent.
South African footage of some of these violent protests shows how unprepared the SAPS are for dealing with incidents of this kind.
“You can see they are not using the correct formations. They revert to self-defence and firearm use too quickly. And there is no clear person in control of a specific block to give orders. It is a disorganised action,” said Zinn.
According to the Sunday Independent, Zinn said the SAPS’ first reaction in instances of violent protests was to send members from the police station into the area who were not trained in crowd control and did not have the necessary equipment.
If our police are not given the right training, what can we expect from our police but brutality and disorganisation?
Frew Murdoch is the assistant editor of HR Pulse. She is currently completing the last semester of her BA degree in Communications and English. "I stumbled across your review of our Ethics Guide published 28 June 2012 and wish to thank you for the positive and complimentary comments made – this was a lovely surprise and most rewarding. I will certainly pass this on to all co-authors of the Guide."
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