Remarks by the Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa MP at the South African Police Service (SAPS) Public Order Policing conference, Burgers Park Hotel, Pretoria

31 Jan 2014

National Commissioner of Police, General Riah Phiyega;
All SAPS Deputy National Commissioners;
All SAPS Provincial Commissioners;
All SAPS Divisional Commissioners;
All SAPS Commanders;
Representatives from Justice, Crime Prevention and Security cluster;
Members of the Media;
Ladies and Gentlemen;

Our democratic dispensation is now 20 years old. As we commemorate this historic achievement, we needed to also reflect on the journey we have traversed as a country and policing is no exception.

This transition from pre-democracy to post-democracy involved the dismantling of the old structures and putting in place new policies, which are underpinned by a community-policing philosophy.

The emphasis since 2000, by the ANC-led government has been on effective delivery of municipal services, especially in addressing service delivery backlogs in the most disadvantaged communities. We have also focused on social and economic development for the poorest members of communities, creating the necessary capacity, systems and structures for effective government as well as participatory governance.

The decade 2000 to 2010 has resulted in positive change for local government. Whilst service delivery and infrastructure backlogs still persist, particularly in smaller towns and in rural areas, significant progress has been made over the past ten years in improving access to basic services such as water, sanitation, and electricity as well as employment levels.

Generally, the country's metropolitan areas and secondary towns have shown the most progress. Cities experienced robust growth and job creation. Despite this progress, as government we acknowledge that more still needs to be done.

As the government that upholds freedom of expression, we recognise a right to express grievances through public protests. In fact, if the protests are peaceful, orderly and non-violent, there would be no need for police presence at these protests.

We need to underscore the point that whereas the Constitution permits unarmed and peaceful protests, the abuse of this right becomes a serious matter when participants take up arms and use unnecessary violence, which requires urgent attention and action from SAPS. The right to peaceful assembly forms a cornerstone of our democracy; built on the principles of collective expression in whichever form they may occur.

As police, you are thus continually being called upon to respond to the manifestations of discontent with government service delivery and labour disputes. Research conducted supports this indicating a significant increase in the proportion of mass gatherings that turn violent. This then requires that the police have the ability of the police to effectively manage these situations.

In August 2011, as the Ministry of Police we undertook a process of amending the Public Order Policing (POP) policy due to the increase in incidents involving the use of force in public order policing, the related injuries to participants and the negative publicity related to various incidents.

We felt it necessary to address relevant focus areas of public order policing to ensure a more effective and professional POP service. These are:

• Effective crowd management that is informed by constitutional and legal imperatives will be dependent on a number of factors. This includes continuous training and education which hinges on effective knowledge management systems within the police.
• The point of departure is that SAPS must ensure peaceable order is sustained without infringing or appearing to infringe upon individual and collective democratic freedoms. This means applying force that is reasonably necessary and proportional to the level of resistance encountered.
• As a result of the policy on public order policing, SAPS has now standardised the training of our public order policing unit, as well as enhancing its human and physical resource capacities.
• Police action, particularly around policing public protests, must always be motivated by sound knowledge of police purpose and involve constant application of the law.
• Our approach to transformation must speak to human resource development; from recruitment to retirement. It must involve a change in attitude, values and norms of behaviours. There must also be a responsibility of management to foster and implement the changes and strategy.
• One of the critical and fundamental changes around improving training is that henceforth all new entry level police members will in future during basic training undergo basic crowd management training as part of their curriculum.
• The policing of public protests and gathering does not necessarily occur on a daily basis and the members of the POP units must be able to be deployed to other visible policing activities. The specialised skills of such units, in fact, could assist the police in some of their visible policing activities such as road block and cordon and search operations.
• The success of effective response by the SAPS with regard to public order policing is thus dependent on a strong line of command and control. It has been proved that command and control has different meaning to different people. Within the context of policing public policing, command and control simply means that certain people must know that they have different roles to play. We cannot have a disconnect between a commander and platoon.
• During the last intake which completed their training in March 2013, the new first responder training course was conducted to empower new police members to assess potential crowd management situations and understand the process of role function activation.
• We have ushered in the Dangerous Weapons Act of 2013 (Act NO.15 of 2013), a new piece of legislation that has been promulgated to address the possession of weapons during public gatherings and mass demonstrations. The fundamental question would be: have you as the police commanders and management enforced the law? Have you familiarised yourself with this Act?

In developing policy and guidelines for public order policing, we aimed to ensure our policing approach is consistent with:

• Constitutionally-accorded rights for all individuals.
• Effective and peaceful crowd control demands.
• An approach that does not impact negatively and enhances tensions between the police and community.
• Our policing approach does not generate the very violence it seeks to control in public protests.

We also need to acknowledge that there are still challenges around securing convictions after arresting perpetrators during violent public protests. As we have seen on many occasions, many protests have been accompanied by serious provocations, intimidations, public violence and even elements of criminality.

As expected, when police arrest the perpetrators at the scene, usually nobody claims responsibility for these actions as such rendering the investigations very difficult, particularly in securing convictions in courts. We also challenge law-abiding citizens to come forward with information in helping trace some of these provocative elements.

We need to stick to the letter and spirit of our POP policy. To demonstrate this point, the policy states that each public protest must be video recorded; yet we have seen some lapses in some of the protests where this is not done.

Whilst the police have a responsibility to police gatherings within the framework of the law, the Gatherings Act confers considerable responsibilities on conveners or organisers of events to ensure that such events are carried out in an orderly and peaceful manner. Any contravention of this must result in the organisers facing criminal charges.

As we conclude we want to reiterate a call to members of society to refrain from carrying dangerous weapons during public protests. We urge them to protest peacefully without any damage to property, attacks on innocent people and attacks on police.

As a nation, collectively as organisers and police, we need to work together to prevent the repeat of the kind of clashes and events, which we witnessed over these past months. It is our responsibility both as individuals and as a nation to ensure that protests take place in a peaceful and incident-free manner.

These events are not what we want to see or want to become accustomed to, in a democracy that is bound by the rule of law, and where we are creating a better life for all our people.

We have raised these prescripts and expectations from a policy point of view with you as senior police leaders and commanders, with the aim that as you discuss amongst yourselves, that you will give them meaningful expressions.

We need a clear programme-of-action which speaks to all these aspects. We need to quell these misconceptions that when people think protests, they should associate them with violence. We do not have to have people dying during public protests. Equally, we need not have police being attacked and killed by protesters.

So we have placed these prescripts and would keenly await the conference outcome, the deliberations which will point us to the right direction as a major urgency; which is the upcoming national elections. At the same time we still need to ensure consistent application of the law.

I thank you.

Issued by the South African Police Service, January 31 2014

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter