Cape Town - The SAPS has been deployed on peacekeeping missions to Sudan for years, and last year sent its first contingent to South Sudan.
Between 1996 and 2008, the SAPS assisted Mozambican police in collecting and destroying weapons left over from that country’s civil war.
In 2007, 77 police officers were sent to the West Indies to help provide security for the Cricket World Cup.
In 2011, 200 officers headed to Equatorial Guinea where the African Union Summit was being held.
They’ve helped train local police in Angola, Haiti and Uganda, and routinely assist as election observers across the continent, including in the DRC, the Comoros and Madagascar.
None of this is a secret: Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula laid it all out in an extensive security briefing in March.
And in 2011, then-police minister Nathi Mthethwa defended these deployments in Parliament, saying, “As a country, we are not an island that operates in isolation to other African and global countries when it comes to fighting crime…. As a member of Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation (SARPCCO), we remain firmly committed to the realisation of the goal of a better life for all.”
Weekend Argus