Durban - When Samkelisiwe Ndwandwe completed her matric two years ago, she had two career options – journalism and policing.
When financial constraints crippled her efforts in the first, she decided to pursue the second.
On Tuesday, the 19-year-old was among thousands of young people who packed Currie’s Fountain in Durban hoping to be selected to join the police force. They all had applied, and were there to listen to how the recruitment process would be conducted.
The SAPS had advertised more than 600 posts for police officers.
“I would like a police career because it does not need many qualifications. It does not need lots of studying. I like helping people,” said Ndwandwe.
“Many police officers do not have the customer service which I am prepared to offer.”
She dropped out of her journalism course at eThekwini College after her mother, a domestic worker, could not keep up with the tuition fees.
“I have not completely abandoned journalism. I will study while at the police,” she said.
The young people started forming a long queue along Winterton Walk early in the morning.
KwaZulu-Natal SAPS human resources manager Colonel Moses Faya said that the massive recruitment drive was in response to the shortage of police officers in the country.
Recruitment processes were taking place in each province.
He said many police officers had resigned for various reasons, others had retired, others had died.
He warned that the SAPS would not tolerate corruption.
“On the forms that the applicants are filling in is written in bold: ‘Not for sale’. The jobs that were advertised are not for sale,” he said.
The recruitment drive was targeting candidates for policing functions that included communication, forensics, detective work and and tactical response team work.
Faya said that the candidates would go through psychometric and fitness tests.
They would also have their fingerprints taken to check that they did not have have criminal records.
The Mercury