Johannesburg - Police Minister Nathi Nhleko faces a grilling from Parliament this week on the state of the police, just a few days after his officers were caught on camera executing a suspected robber.
But Nhleko’s appearance before the portfolio committee on police is not about the Krugersdorp incident, although it is expected that MPs will grill him on the killing of Khulekani Mpanza.
Nhleko has been working on improving the state of the police, and late last year appointed a reference group to look into this.
The reference group is examining the working conditions, dismissals, appointments and disciplinary conduct of the police.
The conduct of the police has been one of the areas that have come to light in recent incidents.
In its annual report tabled in Parliament in September, the police revealed the training of their members to manage volatile situations.
One of the important units that have undergone such training is the Public Order Policing (POP) Unit, which manages crowd control.
“The POP refresher training was initiated in April 2012 and 1 826 operational POP members have since successfully undergone refresher training, including 425 POP members who were trained in 2014/2015,” the police’s annual report stated.
“A total of 854 POP members and 14 POP platoon commanders successfully completed crowd-management training,” it said.
“A total of 23 POP members successfully completed long-range acoustic device training,” the report added.
“Crowd-related incidents totalling 14 740 were responded to and successfully stabilised. These include 12 451 peaceful incidents, such as assemblies, gatherings and meetings; and 2 289 unrest-related incidents, such as labour disputes, including the mining sector, transport and education sectors and community protests,” the report said.
More than 2 200 people were arrested during the violent protests last year.
The police figures show that POP members have continued to respond to the ever-increasing number of protests in the past three years. The number of peaceful protests increased from 10 500 in 2012 to 12 451 in the 2014/15 financial year.
On the other hand, violent service delivery protests have gone up from 1 882 in the 2012/13 financial year to 2 289 during the 2014/15 period.
“It is evident that the number of crowd-related incidents increased notably compared to 2012/2013 and 2013/2014; 1 165 in 2014/15 compared to 2013/14,” the report said.
“The number of peaceful incidents increased by 783 incidents and the number of unrest-related incidents by 382 incidents compared to 2013/14.”
There are 28 POP units in the country.
In the previous financial year, the police bought new equipment to beef up POP members to deal with violent protests.
The Star
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