A reminder that the police are not above the law

Liverpool fan holds up a banner in memory of the Hillsborough disaster victims. Photo: Reuters

Liverpool fan holds up a banner in memory of the Hillsborough disaster victims. Photo: Reuters

Published Jul 1, 2017

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The Timol inquest and Hillsborough arrests are not only about punishing wrongdoing, but also about bringing closure the the families of the victims.

Reputedly, the mills of the gods grind slowly but exceedingly fine. When the perpetrators of wrongs are police officers, it can seem that they grind to a halt.

This week, almost a half century after the events under scrutiny took place, a South African inquest court re-examined the supposed suicide of political activist Ahmed Timol, while held at John Vorster Square police station in Johannesburg. His was one of 73 documented deaths, all inflicted with impunity, in police detention between 1963 and 1990.

Coincidentally also this week, 28 years after Britain’s Hillsborough disaster in which 96 football fans died, criminal charges were brought against six people for what happened there. They include two senior police officers - the officer in command and a knighted former chief constable.

In South Africa, the judicial process now is largely symbolic. The possibilities of legal retribution are diluted by the passage of time and that Timol died in the custody of police. In any case, only three of the officers implicated are still alive.

In Britain, the shorter period and the mass of evidence available, make punishment more likely. The charges against the officers range from misconduct to manslaughter.

While the lesson that the law will, mostly collar the wrongdoer is an important one, these developments in SA and Britain are not only about crime and punishment. They are also about bringing closure to the loved ones of victims.

They are also a reminder the police occupy an ambiguous place in society. Protection can slide easily into aggression.

The primary purpose of the police is to form a “thin blue line” that shields civilians from a criminal underworld. But it is the state that pays salaries and determines senior appointments, so pragmatically, their ultimate loyalty is to the government of the day.

Ahmed Timol as a young schoolteacher in Roodepoort. He was snatched by police at a roadblock in October 1971, and allegedly jumped to his death five days later from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square. He was the 22nd political detainee to die in detention from 1960. Picture. www.ahmedtimol.co.za

And, in the case of the SA Police Service (SAPS), what a disaster has resulted from this. All three national commissioners appointed from within ANC ranks over the past 17 years, have been failures, with one going to jail and two narrowly avoiding doing so.

As the Institute of Security Studies pointed out with the launch this week of a campaign for a merit-based, transparent process to appoint the next national police commissioner, even the government’s National Development Plan acknowledges that the SAPS has a “serial crisis” of top management. It’s a crisis, says the ISS, that has “destabilised the SAPS and fundamentally undermined public safety”.

That is an understatement. Not only does lack of police leadership mean that crime is rampant, but the police are often the offenders.

Statistics from the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), which is supposed to police the police, tell the scale of the problem. In 2015/16, there were 216 deaths in SAPS custody, while a further 366 people died as a result of police action.

Of those deaths, 66 - as supposedly was the demise of Timol - were claimed as suicides.

Interim Ipid figures presented to the parliamentary oversight committee last week, show a worrying upward trend from that report. Deaths from police actions this year were up by 30% to 207, compared to the same period last year.

Just under six out of 10 of those deaths were the result of “police brutality”, as Ipid put it. Just over 4 out of 10 of those deaths were while the arrested person was in police custody.

One cannot simply conclude from these statistics that the new SAPS is as bad, or even worse, than the apartheid era one. The one thing that has improved since the death of Timol, is official record keeping.

What hasn’t improved is our ability to ensure justice. In the period 2015/16, Ipid managed to secure only 4 convictions for deaths in custody and 25 for deaths as a result of police actions. From those 29 convictions for wrongful death came not a single jail sentence.

Not one.

As Gareth Newman, analyst at ISS, points out, the first step to rectifying the SAPS’s problems is to ensure that the next national police commissioner is fit to serve. SA, both in terms of crime and police brutality, cannot afford another fool in gold braid.

But, at the end of the day, it is not down to mechanisms of government. As with the re-opening of the Timol inquest and the launch of Hillsborough prosecutions, it ultimately comes down to the people to hold their governments and public servants to account.

We must seek justice not only for Timol, but for everyone who has been the victim of police criminality.

* Follow WSM on Twitter @TheJaundicedEye

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

Weekend Argus

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