EDITORIAL | It seems Cele’s trademark hat has covered his eyes and ears

National police minister Bheki Cele is no stranger to controversy. In his four years as our nation’s top cop he has dodged numerous bullets over his utterances, political flip-flops and spiralling crime statistics. 

On Monday night, a week after yet another damning report on police ineptitude, this time related to the role in last year’s devastating July civil unrest, Cele glibly ignored critics calling for his Panama hat-adorned head, insisting the country was in safe hands. 

The report, commissioned by the presidency and headed by Prof Sandy Africa, was unequivocal about the failure of the police to prevent or react to the civil unrest that claimed over 300 lives and cost an estimated R50bn in damages.

It found members of the police services were not given a clear mandate on how to effectively generate crime intelligence, that our public order policing (POP) unit was wholly inadequate and that in some instances police literally watched as looters raided and vandalised buildings. 

There was also pointed reference to the political fallout between Cele and his lieutenant Khehla Sithole and the paralysing, operational impact of this on policing. 

The spotlight on the failures associated with POP is a harsh blow and a bitter reminder of the 2012 massacre in Marikana. The event triggered the Farlam commission, which generated a tome of recommendations a year later on how to remedy the response of the boys in blue to handle crowd management and public disorder during service delivery protests and labour disputes.

In March 2021, Cele said R598m had been spent on improving resources and capacity of the POP unit when he unveiled the 596-page report on crowd management in Pretoria.

He said the money was spent on two-way radios, loud hailers, video cameras and PA systems for better communication during operations, and some of the funds went towards training.

The posturing at the state of the nation debate may be about showmanship, but the issues are very real. Now is the time for leadership to reject guile and rhetoric.

But despite half a billion rand and seven years later, it seems the bullet points in the Farlam report — and the lives of the 34 miners killed and 78 others injured — were largely ignored. 

The president’s panel highlighted that the number of POP officers is “pitifully low, inadequately equipped and their equipment is not optimally maintained”. There is only one water cannon per province, they have no air capacity, they ran out of rubber bullets and the working conditions in many of the police stations that experienced conflict are not conducive to the police providing a productive and professional service. 

Resources, or a lack thereof, are  also the basis on which the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) turned to the courts for equitable policing in poor, black communities in SA. It believes poor communities have been discriminated against, based on race and lack of wealth. 

A commission was established in 2012 in which cases of alleged police inefficiency experienced by members of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), SJC, Equal Education (EE) and Free Gender were drawn together into a report and released two years later.

The commission made 20 recommendations which, the SJC said, had “the potential to change the face of policing and justice in SA”.

But despite attempts to engage police for nearly a year after the report was released, there has been no change. 

Yet Cele still has the temerity to shrug off criticism of the police force; claim Sithole is in cahoots with EFF commander in chief Julius Malema to oust him, an allegation he was later forced to withdraw; dismiss suggestions of budget constraints hampering policing; and proudly proclaim the establishment of specialised teams to strike a blow against organised crime syndicates and instigators of political violence. 

While he cast aside the doom and gloom scenario as if it was a figment of the nation’s imagination, the EFF and the DA were not charmed. 

And neither would have been the hundreds of small, medium and large businesses that had to close shop, let go of staff and buckle under impossible financial burdens after the eight deadly days in July last year. Nor the families who lost loved ones.

The posturing at the state of the nation debate may be about showmanship, but the issues are very real. Now is the time for leadership to reject guile and rhetoric and to make the call to finally hang up that Panama hat. 

South Africans deserve more than a never-ending carousel of political mudslinging and passing the buck on this deadly dereliction of duty.