Rustenburg - The South African Policing Union (Sapu) on Tuesday called on Police Minister Fikile Mbalula to retract the statement he made on Twitter that he had removed the Mogale City Cluster Commander and Kagiso police station Commander because he cannot have rotten cops within the police service.
"We are giving Minister Mbalula 24 hours to retract this statement as it defames our members. These senior officers were never convicted in any forum departmental or court of law.
"We have always called upon the Minister to stop his irresponsible statements that only catches to make newspaper headlines. His continued irresponsible statements are causing a lot of harm within the police service," said general secretary Oscar Skommere.
"As a responsible union we will never allow a situation where our dedicated and committed senior officers are humiliated by a minister who is overlapping in his job."
He called on Gauteng Provincial Commissioner Deliwe De Lange to make a commitment that the officers would not be summarily removed from their posts.
"We are committed to working with the management in our primary task of rooting out crime in our society. Whilst committed to that just because we will not compromise the dignity of our members.
"We find it totally strange that the minister continues to take over the operational responsibilities of the national commissioner," he said.
"We had earlier called upon him to speed the process of appointing a permanent national police commissioner and we had hoped now that we have the national commissioner, the minister will back off and concentrate in his constitutional mandate."
He said if Mbalula does not retract this statement within the 24 hour deadline, they would litigate against him.
On Monday, Mbalula went to Krugersdorp to report to community of Munsieville and Kagiso about progress made following their protest a week ago.
The community shutdown Krugersdorp in protest against drug and human trafficking, they also complained that some police officers were on the payroll of drug lords.
Mbalula told the community that they have removed the station commander of Krugersdorp and Kagiso police stations, the cluster commander of Krugersdorp was also removed.
"We have change two station commanders who under them, there has been implications of police officers who are in the payroll or are being bribe on daily basis by people who are selling drug in this area," Skommere said.
"We have gone down on the ground through crime intelligence verified and found it ourselves that indeed there is a challenge, so they have been shifted."