Poor relationship between Cele and Sitole behind July 2021 unrest: experts

The breakdown in the relationship between former police commissioner Gen Khehla Sitole and police minister Bheki Cele was behind the poor police response to the July 2021 violent riots and looting in parts of the country, experts said.

The South African Human Rights Commission and the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural Religious and Linguistic Communities released the investigation hearings report on Monday, outlining events that led to the unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

It highlighted the blame game between Cele and Sitole over the role SAPS played in crime intelligence information that could have prevented the unrest.

“That poor relationship between them was the crunch that defeated the ability of security services to act with the necessary interventions required at the time. It’s a sad thing that such a big part of the problem is the relationship between the two,” said Institute for Security Studies’ senior researcher Johan Burger.

The report revealed that in his testimony Sitole said the SAPS were under-resourced, had a budget cut and there was a breakdown in communications with Cele in sharing crime intelligence reports.

Cele denied SAPS was under-resourced as there was an underspending of R138m that year. He also claimed to have not received intelligence reports since December 2020.

“SAPS failed to detect the planning and execution of the unrest, which falls within its mandate. A combination of factors appeared to have caused these shortcomings,” the report said.

“Evidence tabled before the panel points to lapses in under-resourcing and the consequent lack of capacity in crime intelligence. Evidently, there has also been a breakdown in coherent communication in the SAPS between crime intelligence, the national commissioner of police, relevant operational divisions and the minister of police.”

Evidence indicates a need for urgent and comprehensive improvement in SAPS and crime intelligence to address systemic issues and ensure accountability to prevent similar unrest in future.

Sitole’s successor, Gen Fannie Masemola, said on Monday they have increased their staff since the last report by a panel chaired by Prof Sandy Africa, which was released to President Cyril Ramaphosa in November 2021.

“Most of what is in the [Sandy Africa] report we have learnt and have taken forward. We have already started training our public order police. Of the 20,000 [officers] we have recruited in the past two years we have allocated 5,000 to the public order police [unit]... During the unrest we had just under 5,000 and we are increasing the numbers and taken into account the population has increased. We will make sure we continuously improve the numbers.

“In the areas of crime intelligence we have improved in terms of employing the management that is there. We are still enforcing that environment, and we are not finished and will improve that environment to respond appropriately,” Masemola said.

Head of the African Futures and Innovation programme at ISS Jakkie Cilliers said there seemed to be improvement since Masemola’s appointment.

However, there seems to be scepticism surrounding SAPS, despite the new appointments and increase in police personnel.

Cilliers said there were still issues of poor management in the police and certain units required drastic change.

“The detectives services unit, the arms control unit, the forensic unit — there are key things that need to be fixed there which are entry points that can improve things substantially. Then there should be a shift in priorities from VIP protection and politicians and that money could be spent effectively,” Cilliers said.

Despite the increase in public order police officers, Burger said he was sceptical as he is not convinced they are at the level that would increase performance should unrest break out.

“From time to time you see some successes by crime intelligence, but this is completely different from the kind of intelligence you require to forecast the development of conditions that would create a situation similar to what we saw in July 2021.

“I am sceptical about the claims by the police that they have improved on all the criticism levelled against them in the Sandy Africa report and that they are now capable of dealing with a situation like this,” said Burger.