The South African Police Service’s woes aren’t over yet.
This week, the parliamentary police oversight committee forced the head of detectives, Raymond Lalla, to admit that only 14 percent of the country’s nearly 34 000 detectives had been properly trained.
Today the Saturday Star can reveal that the police’s new elite crime-fighting unit, the Hawks, has a success rate of only 11 percent, compared to the 90 percent of the Scorpions it replaced.
Added to this, the SAPS has had to declare a contingency fund of R7 billion for legal claims against it, after recently firing its legal services head, Lindiwe Mtimkulu. The Democratic Alliance had called for her head, claiming she had run the SAPS’s legal services department into the ground.
Yesterday, however, national commissioner General Bheki Cele came out fighting, vowing that police would implement new strategies to improve their service to the community.
One of these was to join forces with nine departments, including the South African Revenue Service, Home Affairs and Customs – in the rollout of a roadblock strategy.
Cele warned tax evaders, unlicensed drivers and anyone with anything to hide from Home Affairs or Customs to beware come December 4, when the police would begin their new, all-inclusive approach to roadblocks.
The DA’s shadow minister for safety and security, Dianne Kohler Barnard, submitted questions about Justice Department revelations that the number of dockets sent back by lower courts for further investigation had risen by 74 percent.
Responding to Kohler Barnard’s statement, Zweli Mnisi, spokesman for the Police Ministry, said
“…the criminal justice system… needs to be strengthened. We were the first to acknowledge some of the lack of capacity in these areas (Intelligence and Detectives), hence one of the critical aspects we spoke about was around training.”
Mnisi also said unspent portions of the contingency of R7bn for legal claims might be redirected to programmes.
He said, however, that the ministry had vowed not to tolerate officers abusing the law.
Kohler Barnard also criticised the Hawks’ “underachievement” of only an 11 percent conviction rate. “Their conviction rate for organised crime is just 11.94 percent, and that after having failed to reach their very low target of getting 25 percent of cases to court. These figures are utterly unacceptable.”
She said the performance of the Hawks was unimpressive “to say the least”.
“The Scorpions had a 98 percent success rate in court, and the country was sold the concept of the Hawks on the premise that it would be better than the unit that was closed down. That isn’t the case. The ANC slaughtered a thoroughbred and replaced it with a Shetland pony,” she added.
Hawks spokesman Musa Zondi said comparing the two was like comparing bananas to apples. “We are using different formulas,” he said. – Additional reporting by Michelle Pietersen