Law and order press release

Cape Town. Wednesday 13 November.

Dr Mamphela Ramphele, the leader of Agang SA, calls on Parliament to reject the appointment of disgraced former Ekurhuleni metro police chief Robert McBride as head of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid).

"McBride has tarnished his copybook with too many criminal charges that he has managed to escape in the past, making his potential appointment to such an important public institution highly questionable," she said. "South African citizens deserve better - they deserve clean government that looks after the interests of every citizen, not the political elite," she said.

Dr Ramphele, who addressed a meeting in the Strand district of Cape Town last evening, called on South Africans to vote for a clean and professional police force - one of the key issues Agang SA is championing in the run up to the 2014 elections.

At the meeting, she praised the Strand Broadlands community for the way in which they had managed to root out a scourge of drug dealers by working together with the police in a peaceful and effective campaign over a period of seven months.

Her message follows the alarming event last week in Khutsong, west of Johannesburg, where residents took the law into their own hands against gangsters, and killed six people.

"This country desperately needs to respect its public institutions, including the police, so that we can have law and order. We need a country that is free of corruption and crime - a country that trains and pays its police force well and expects the best of them," Ramphele said.

"Imagine we could have a country where everybody feels safe on the streets. It is possible, if we all insist on the best services our nation can deliver to us all."

Statement issued by Dr Mamphela Ramphele, the leader of Agang SA, November 13 2013

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