Discussion paper on policing by Fink Haysom.
Commissioned by Department of Information and Publicity, African National
Congress.
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The Need To Address the Policing Crisis
2.3 The Causes of the Crisis
2.4 The Failure of Internal Reforms
3.1 Democratic
3.2 Accountable
3.3 Visible
3.4 Pro-Active
3.5 Representative
3.6 Transparent
3.7 Professional
3.8 Impartial Service
3.9 Civilian Service
4.1 Demilitarisation
4.2 Affirmative Action
4.3 Independent Monitoring
4.4 Accountability
4.5 Training
4.6 Recruitment and Promotion
4.7 Rationalisation of Organisation
4.8 Community Empowerment
4.9 The Use of Force and Public Order Policing
Every South African is entitled to live in safety, free from crime and violence. The first steps towards redressing the unacceptable levels of crime in our society, caused in essence by apartheid itself, must be the creation of social justice and the establishment of a democratic constitutional order in which, at last, all citizens will be able to respect the laws of the country and those who enforce the law.
In addition South Africa desperately needs an effective police force, a force in which all its citizens can have the fullest confidence. This requires a break with the apartheid past which, in its exploitation of the police as a political instrument, created a militaristic, secretive, unaccountable, racist, and violent institution. A new South African police force can only be established on the basis of the following principles:
Informed by the experience of both Bantustans and states elsewhere, the ANC has set its face against entirely autonomous, regional and local police. Such forces hold out the possibility of lower standards of policing, jurisdictional confusion, partisan and discriminatory policing, and the creation of ethnic or regional militias.
The only framework which would ensure such an effective, competent and accountable police force would be a single national police force, which is obliged by law to subject itself to national, regional, and local mechanisms of accountability and evaluation/control. Such a framework would ensure the high standards of professionalism, impartiality and accountability that all South Africans desire.
The problems which beset the SAP and the homeland police forces has reached crisis proportions. This crisis is manifest in their failure to deliver even a minimum level of public safety and security. It is caused by a variety of internal and external problems which neither the police themselves nor the National Party can resolve.
Hardly a week goes by without the publication of a new report alleging either police brutality or police ineptitude. Dr Waddington, a former British policeman, has sharply criticised basic flaws in the SAP's system of conducting investigations and the absence of effective police leadership. Janine Rauch, a Wits university criminologist, claims that police training is inappropriate and racist in structure. The late Dr Gluckman had disclosed an alarming pattern of recent deaths in detention and suggested that members of the police force are implicated. The Commission of Inquiry into the events at Boipatong is told that the police have mistakenly and yet routinely erased vital tape recordings. On the one hand the police continue to be accused, as at Protea Police Station, of reckless or undisciplined shooting of demonstrators, and on the other hand they are incapable of protecting the World Trade Centre from a motley band of rightwing racists. A nationwide swoop on PAC office-bearers is humiliatingly unsuccessful in its own terms. Every claim by the police that they are reforming their practices and structure is undermined by continued revelations of incompetence, abuse or bias.
The police have been repeatedly criticised by both black and white communities for their failure to contain ordinary common law crime. A number of judges have recently chastised the police regarding the quality and approach to investigations - many of them involving murder. While the SAP boasts that its forensic laboratories are equipped with the most modern technology and equipment, even with regard to the approximately 100 murders of or attacks on policemen in the Vaal area in 1992, not a single successful prosecution has resulted. If the police cannot successfully investigate the murders of their own members it should come as no surprise that their record in investigations into other political murders can be described as woeful.
In addition the SAP have come under fire from a range of political leaders who charge that the police sympathise with, or actively support, one or other political party - (notably the IFP), and whose indifference (at best) to township violence amounts to participation in the massacres and murders which have left over 18 000 dead since 1986. Many respected international organisations have linked police inaction causally to the problem of political violence. As a result the police have become more isolated. They have also become more divided. African policemen, subjected to both internal mostly unofficial racial barriers, and external rejection, are unmotivated and frustrated. The situation is so critical that both white and black communities, believing that the police have given up any investigative role, are opting for alternatives to the SAP to protect their communities. In addition, the SAP has been the target of fatal attacks by criminal and other elements.
In dealing with all these criticisms, the SAP has been unable to account for its inability to resolve crime, in the light of its own previous claims of effectivity and invincibility. Its only small respite has come from the confused and contradictory nature of the public demands made upon it - more police - less police; be more robust - be less robust; talk to our witnesses - you can't talk to our witnesses.
Undoubtedly the SAP is in deep crisis and police morale must be low. The temptation to greet evidence of police incompetence, or police abuse of power, with glee is misplaced and short-sighted. The schoolground bully is not about to be expelled. Indeed, the SAP is perhaps the most central of institutions during this period of transition, capable of sabotaging the process by deed or by inaction. It is the SAP that is charged, in part, with policing the transition to a democracy and equally importantly, guaranteeing the stable consolidation of what may be a fragile social compact, a fledgling democracy.
Unlike a defence force, a police service will be a necessary and important social institution meeting clear and urgent, societal needs. During the transition and after, South Africans will demand safety from violence and protection from crime. The failure to deliver these conditions will destabilise the country and demoralise its citizens. We must acknowledge that crime and violence will not simply disappear after democratic elections. Indeed without proper attention it may well be that the grotesque levels of violent crime, economic crime and politically inspired violence will increase.
There are approximately 114,000 members of the SAP, with the homeland police making up a further approximately 19,000. These persons have legal, technical and experiential skills which simply can not be transferred or replaced overnight. Undoubtedly some of these police members will be unwilling or incapable of adapting to the policies and structures of a new South African police service. It can be safely assumed that the total size of a new service will not be much smaller, and may be larger than the existing forces. Unlike the Defence Force the SAP cannot be transformed by a simplistic strategy of integrating this force with the armed forces of the liberation movements. To believe that because both policemen and soldiers bear guns, their jobs are interchangeable would be a serious misunderstanding of the police function. It would compound the worst fallacies of the apartheid conception of policing in South Africa. In any event the relative imbalance in numbers indicates that such a strategy would have only a limited impact.
Apart from the police forces of the homelands there are no other 'police' forces to integrate. It will be argued here that the preparation for lateral recruitment of new policemen (i.e. into the senior ranks) must take place now. Nonetheless, the SAP and homeland forces are the starting point, the foundation of the service which must police South Africa's transition to democracy and beyond. This is not an argument to let things be. On the contrary,it is an argument for immediate engagement and, if necessary, confrontation with the existing police services. The SAP and its policing practices must be engaged, challenged and restructured in accordance with a new vision of how policing should be conducted. The police cannot be ignored or 'boycotted'. Democrats defer or delay this task at their peril. One negative feature of the current approach to self-defence units has been that our communities have ignored the challenge of subjecting the police to the communities' demands. The energy of the community was directed into parallel structures to the exclusion of political engagement with policing agencies. Properly accountable SDUs should even have demanded resources and support from the police.
The question which must nonetheless be asked is whether and in what way the existing police agencies can be transformed into an institution capable of discharging this awesome responsibility? In order to answer this question, and to understand the current crisis in policing, we must appreciate that the SAP has been more profoundly scarred by apartheid than any other institution. Its apartheid roots have distorted and given a unique meaning to the police motto "We protect and we serve". If the SAP is to restore its motto to its ordinary meaning it will have to deal with the two principal but connected policing consequences of the apartheid legacy: The lack of legitimacy of the police in the eyes of the black community and; its institutional structure and practices.
2.3.1 The SAP and Police-Community Relations
To say that the relations between black communities and the SAP are lacking in mutual trust would be an extreme understatement. The police have been described as the "jam in the apartheid sandwich". They have been caught between abhorrent, unpopular political policies and the persons upon whom these policies were enforced. The police were required to perform the frontline role in the maintenance of apartheid. That they did so with enthusiasm has marked them out as apartheid zealots. The police were structurally severed from any relationship to those that they policed. There was no pressure to be responsive or sensitive to black communities because such communities had no voice. Accordingly, in performing this political task the police were and could be brutal and insensitive without having to pay any personal or institutional price. In this situation the community came to view the police as an alien force, and a mutually reinforcing pattern of hostility emerged and persists to this day. This pattern was strengthened by the perceived racism in every aspect of policing: the function; the style; the appearance; and the attitudes of the police.
Police could have done much, however, to have offset the impact of this role on their legitimacy. Police everywhere perform both a law enforcement and protective role. In South Africa the police did not perform their protective function, except for whites. Policing resources and priorities were diverted either to white communities or in line with security considerations. Black South Africans have endured only the enforcement, not the protection of the law. The critical question is whether this pattern can be turned around. There is good reason for believing that it can be. Many communities had shown a degree of willingness to co-operate with the police after the police have shown greater tolerance to demonstrations and gatherings in 1989, and after the events of February 1990. Many of the initial political and community demands had concerned better and more effective policing, not an outright rejection of the SAP. However the SAP's response during this period has been so uneven, so short-sighted, and its performance of its simple crime-prevention role has been so ineffective that what little relationship there was has floundered on broken promises and the suspicion that the SAP cannot be rehabilitated. This suspicion is strengthened by the public relations responses of the SAP which persist in singling out the ANC as the SAP's principal adversary.
The police now complain that they are unable to win back a protective image because their efficiency is hampered by lack of community assistance. But potential witnesses are reluctant to assist the SAP because, despite personal risk to complainants, the complaints get nowhere. It is a Catch-22. Dr Waddington suggests that the SAP use this excuse too liberally.
2.3.2 The Structure and Culture of the SAP
The new framework for policing was revealingly expressed by F W de Klerk in January 1990, when he stated: "... we want to take the police out of the political arena. We don't want to use you any more as instruments to reach certain political goals. We as politicians must take full responsibility for politics ... This is the direction we are taking and I want you to make peace with this new line ..." When the onus was on the SAP to introduce and effect confidence-building measures, why is it that they have failed to do so? One reason why the police have been unable to give effect to the new sentiment, is that these new ideas could not properly integrate themselves into an old body. As a policing agency the South African Police is a uniquely paramilitary, centralised, hierarchical and secretive force. It had inherited the structure from its colonial antecedents. The worst features of this structure had been bolstered by the sweeping powers conferred upon the police over the years and which have insulated them from public inquiry.
Within such an institution a particular police culture developed. The institution displayed a defensive and xenophobic attitude to criticism, becoming self-congratulatory. Despite being equipped with modern technology, its methods and techniques were old-fashioned. The use of force was preferred to other policing options. As Waddington suggests, confession-extraction became the preferred method of securing convictions. Modern investigative techniques were not rewarded. Within such an institution recruitment and promotion patterns meshed with the values of the institution. Only those who wanted to perform what was seen as a political or racial role would enlist and those who performed well would be promoted. When racial abuses or police brutality were exposed, police senior officers would first deny or hide the abuse, and thereafter categorise the individuals as deviant 'bad eggs'. In reality it was the police management and inadequate systems of internal control that was rotten.
Since 1990 there have been various attempts to adapt the structure and to respond to the criticisms directed at the police practices. These have however been generally too little, and too late. They are introduced piecemeal and are crisis-driven. Some recent programmes and pronouncements, which are in line with the approach here, flounder because they are either introduced without community consultation or, more often, because they lack the commitment from the SAP to properly effect them. Furthermore it appears that reformed approaches do not filter down to the rank and file. The South African Police, like most police forces, is a conservative institution insulated from the political demands of the people. Such institutions are not enthusiastic about change. The much heralded disbandment of the Special Branch, in reality saw the former personnel of this unit simply recongregate in the less accountable, less visible Criminal Intelligence Service. The initial 'community-policing' initiatives had more to do with public relations than with 'communities'. Recent attempts to boost the important Community Relations Division has still not seen it integrated into general operations. It remains understaffed and marginalised as a 'support service'. The early retirement of some generals appears to have had little to do with any redirection of the SAP, and more to do with internal promotions and unilateral restructuring. It should be noted that the internal structure of the South African Police has altered dramatically in the past four years. Instead of resembling a triangle the South African Police is now top-heavy with colonels, brigadiers and generals.
Other reforms too, suffer from the SAP ambiguity towards change. The Police Board suffers from the failure to accord it proper financial resources to conduct its operations and research. The independent Police Reporting Officers investigative monitors introduced by the Peace Accord, now find they are denied right of access to dockets and are subject to an SAP decision as to which cases of police misconduct they investigate. The scheme by which lay visitors will be able to conduct spot checks on police stations will by-pass the more representative peace committees in favour of the police-driven liaison committees in the selection of legitimate community representatives.
The much publicised up-grading of criminal investigation techniques following the Waddington report have delivered nothing substantial. The basic errors identified there appeared to have been practiced in other areas such as Bruntville. Notwithstanding the rhetoric of decentralisation and community sensitivity, accords between regional police officers and communities relating to mechanisms of transparency, complaints handling, or demonstrations have been vetoed or not received support from the police hierarchy. It is clear that divisions within the police are surfacing, between those who favour the old stye of policing and those who want a new style, between white and black police officers, between regional managers and Pretoria. These divisions reflect the crossroads at which the police have arrived, and they cannot be resolved from within.
If the police are to adapt to the role which they are now required to play, the internal structure, and the cop-culture which it informs, will have to be changed in line with a new vision of policing.
The ANC's vision of policing, set out at its policy conference, is in line with developments that have taken place in policing elsewhere in the world. In brief, police forces everywhere have begun to stress 'community' or 'consensus' policing as the most viable model for the 1990's. Even the SAP has belatedly recognised this.
This philosophy is not new but grounded in the original principles of modern policing. Community policing is not 'soft' policing. Community policing has now been recognised as more effective because it understands that it is not the police alone who combat and prevent crime. It is the community who are largely responsible for criminal prosecutions. They lay charges, make statements, testify in court, and assist the police in the performance of their functions. Without this co-operation no police force can discharge its duties. Community policing has a number of elements. These elements, all interlinked, involve at least the following:
3.1 The bodies that control the police and which make the laws that the police enforce must be democratically constituted. This is the most important requirement for a legitimate and popular police service.
3.2 There must be increased local community influence and control over policing priorities and practices. Accountability to local communities involves more than public relations. The relationship between the police and the policed should be one of reciprocal control. Accountability must mean the real empowerment of communities to determine policing priorities and to assess police performance against verifiable standards. This can best take place at a local level where the consumers can measure the performance of the police.
3.3 Policing must be visible. The reason for promoting a visible police force is simply that the police must be in touch with their community, patrolling both on foot - and in cars interacting with their community. Police must be welcome at all community gatherings. They should not lurk in armoured cars or behind barbed wire garrisons - as they do now. This requires a new emphasis on area specialists (policemen who know the community they serve) rather than technical experts; an emphasis on smaller, accessible police stations rather than large and impersonal fortresses.
3.4 Police resources should be directed at preventative policing rather than after-the-crime or 'fire-brigade' policing. Such policing requires an increased level of community co-operation and information. And, of course, poor communities, without access to the private security agencies employed by the wealthy, must have greater access to police resources. Police are required to be pro-active, taking part in educational, social and physical planning so as to promote a safer healthier environment.
3.5 The police must appear more racially and gender representative of the community they police. This aspect is essential to win effective community support for the police. The community must view the police as their own. It will not do so if the police are unrepresentative. In particular, greater participation by women in policing will do much to establish a new police culture, undermining inappropriate machismo values or misplaced adventurism.
3.6 There must be increasing transparency of the policing institution. Transparency implies that the processes of decision-making and discipline-enforcement are open and visible to the public. In line with most democratic police forces, independent lay-persons should participate in the investigation of complaints against police men and women.
3.7 Policing must be seen as a professional activity. In line with this emphasis there should be better training of police men and women. The ANC believes in 'better' not 'more' police. Recruitment programs should be directed at effective problem-solvers not 'men' of action. Training should be directed at alternatives to the use of force to solve problems. Professionalisation of the force must entail deprogramming military approaches. Note, for example, that an appropriate military stratagem for dealing with the enemy may be maximum response, whereas a proper police strategy for dealing with fellow citizens must always be based on the principles of minimum force. New training methods must also emphasise the role of the police in protecting and upholding human rights especially of the marginalised or of minorities. It must certainly seek to eradicate any ethnic, racist or sexist prejudice in the police.
Professionalism must not, however, be interpreted to mean the promotion of an unaccountable, politically illiterate, self-regulating force.
3.8. Police must be seen and see themselves as the guardians of human rights generally and the constitution in particular. Police should be required to be politically non-partisan in the performance of their duties. In the long term the police must assume the constitutional profile of a guardian of the constitution and not the instrument of any political party. This is not to deny the right of any policeman to join a political party or trade union of his choice but is to place limits on the political profile and involvement of such a policeman. Local station commanders should not be seen canvassing or holding office in any political party. Furthermore the broader policing function must be subject to greater multi-party scrutiny by the bodies of elected representatives at local, regional and national government, and should not be the concern of only one party.
3.9 Policing must be seen as a civilian service. This concept involves the subordination of policing to civilian values as well as emphasising the ethics of public service. All governments have the duty to provide a minimum of community safety and personal security. Governments do this through the policing service they provide. The citizens are the consumers of this service and have a right to demand that the quality of this service meets their satisfaction.
The South African Police must and should begin immediately to address those aspects of their structure which are incompatible with the more effective approach outlined above. Of course, successful interim measures will always be capped or undermined by the political and economic forces at work in the broader society. In other words the South African Police will never win the battle for legitimacy while a National Party Minister regards the Ministry as his or her preserve. Such a system has insulated the police from popular pressure. Much more critically, the police cannot be seen by ordinary people as 'our' national police but will continue to be seen as 'their' sectarian police. Thus the first and most important transitional measure which is required is the subordination of the Ministry of Law and Order to a multi-party committee. In the long term the subordination of this Ministry to a democratically elected parliament would further enhance the legitimacy of the institution.
In line with the ANC's vision of policing, the ANC proposes the following:
The demilitarisation of police structures, rankings, uniform and equipment. This will simultaneously promote more creative, socially skilled policemen and women as well as ameliorate the perception that the SAP is the army by another name. The demilitarisation of the SAP and the homeland police forces will send a signal of change. It will assist in creating the other conditions necessary for community policing such as patrolling on foot ('the bobby on the beat') which are unrealistic whilst there is such intense levels of hostility to the police in many areas. The shift to smaller accessible police stations, staffed by members well acquainted with community problems, and visible to the community, must be supported.
The racial appearance of the police command structure must be confronted. All but three of the 56 police generals are white. In the interim a program of affirmative action needs to be introduced. Such a program must address the lack of women in the police force and provide an opportunity for the many South Africans who would have wished to pursue a policing career were it not for the racial and political stigma and role of the South African Police. The integration of homeland police officers and the lateral appointment of outsiders, both at officer level and at lower levels, must be a place to start. There are talents in our communities which have not yet been tapped. Affirmative action must not be understood to mean that the police service should forgo its standards of professionalism, nor that there should be racial favouritism in recruitment.
Although the overall racial composition of the force is not out of line with the requirements of representivity, the command structure is so distinctly out of line as to indicate historical discrimination, as well as formal or informal barriers to promotion. This applies also to entry or progress in specialist fields such as criminal investigation.
Finally for the reasons set out below the ANC does not support any programme, affirmative or not, which would amount to ethnic or racial cleansing of the policing in 'own' areas, (e.g. whites only in predominantly white areas, blacks only in the townships). The police must represent the full diversity of South Africans yet be a prominent symbol of our single, unique nationhood.
The introduction of a complaints and investigation mechanism under the control of a civilian. The proceedings and performance of this unit would be open to public scrutiny. Such a mechanism must be accessible and independent. It would provide a means whereby every citizen can police the police. It would allow the police to truly claim that they are subject both to the law and the people. Lay persons must also participate in this mechanism. The importance of public confidence in the willingness of the police to examine themselves must not be underestimated, and is a critical first step to transparency.
The introduction of procedures and methods for establishing the accountability of local, divisional and regional police chiefs to locally, regionally and nationally representative elected bodies is urgent. A national statute must establish the appropriate powers of such bodies, and the functions in respect of which they have review or policy making powers. As is discussed below, the police must be subject to national standards and legislation in a single national police force. Regions and local governments could however have powers in regard to allocation of resources, assessment of visible policing functions and reviewing police performance in criminal investigations. In addition civilian monitoring of police stations through lay visitors, as well as participation in complaints units would provide other forms of local oversight. These measures need to be complemented by the removal of legal and other barriers to information on police decision-making.
Local and regional communities must be entitled to extract pledges of performance from the police. Community drafted public safety charters which set standards in regard to reaction/response times, rates of prosecution should be negotiated with local police chiefs who would be required to report regularly to the community.
One consequence of this approach must be to vest local station commanders with more authority, especially in regard to the intervention of outsiders, such as internal stability units. These outsiders may break all the negotiated rules but will not have to endure the consequences.
At the national level, there must be a regular and public assessment of the police service's strategic planning. Such an assessment must go hand in hand with a public dialogue on the public's needs, and the implementation of such national policy can be monitored by a civilian police board. A Minister of Police must be responsible and accountable for overall national policing policy and performance.
There must be a re-appraisal and redirection of police training, not only to educate trainees in more effective investigative and technical skills, but also in the use of alternatives to violence in solving problems, and more generally on the importance of human rights both now and in the future.
Training will be a central component of reform and transformation of the police. In place of the correspondence courses currently favoured the training should be skills-based, on the job and recognise talents and experience rather than certificates. In addition re-training of police managers in modern techniques and principles of participatory management would facilitate the arduous task of transforming the police culture and creating an institution which has the capacity for flexibility and 'bottom-up' communication required for the development of genuine community policing. Affirmative action is not a programme to redress past wrongs, it is a deliberate attempt to improve the organisational structure and will reap benefits for policing as a whole. It thus requires additional resources in the field of education and training. The de facto vestiges of racism or racial segregation in the existing training institutions must be removed.
Re-evaluation of the recruitment and promotion criteria so as to reward those professional policemen who willingly accept the new values of policing. Disciplining errant policemen is only a small part in promoting a new police culture. A much more effective method is to provide positive incentives, particularly to those who understand the principles of accountability and the need to build police/community relations. Until the power to promote is removed from those who respect the old ways, police efficacy and responsiveness is unlikely to improve. This further underlines the need to remove exclusive control over the SAP from the National Party. The remarks made earlier concerning the promotion of new qualities desirable in a new police force need to be repeated here. The new police service is not a repository for action 'men'. Recruits must be screened to assess their overall social skills. The importance of importing representative values must be recognised. Police officers must be promoted, not merely on the basis of paper qualifications but their skills in leadership, problem solving, negotiations, resource management, familiarity with the community environment, policing service delivery.
In particular the present paramilitary system is characterised by duplication of structures, of specialist departments and a lack of co-ordination of key functions at local level. The core policing functions of crime prevention through visible community policing, needs to be raised in status through changes to the promotion and remuneration system. 'Head office' (currently around 3,000 strong) should be cut down to size and many of its functions and resources decentralised, so as to boost street-level policing.
Finally, communities themselves need to be empowered to meet the challenge of community - police partnership. For this to occur communities must be informed, trained, and adequately resourced, even at police expense. In addition the community must be encouraged and assisted to assume a more active role in crime prevention and in the policing of their areas.
It goes without saying that a new service must ensure that the principle of minimum force and the value of life must be instilled in its members. One may assume that the other measures described above will promote this.
In regard to public order policing two options are open. The first is to vest the local and regional police with this responsibility thereby ensuring that local police will be accountable for the social consequences of robust or reckless conduct in the policing of demonstrations. The second is to hive this responsibility off to a specialised unit separated from the police. As a result the police will not endorse the stigma which inevitably accompanies this task. Either way local commanders must be in overall control of any public order policing unit brought into his or her area. While neither option is definitely recommended, it may be that the need to 'rehabilitate' the police would suggest the latter option, the creation of a third security force, the National Peacekeeping Force could constitute the embryo of such a force.
We must accept as a starting point that, in accordance with contemporary policing practice and experience, policing is most effective where it enjoys the support of the community, and concomitantly when the police are accountable to those in whose name they exercise their powers and deliver their services. Such regional and local accountable/supervision is positive and should be endorsed.
This however is not the same as establishing an autonomous, regional or municipal police force. Such accountability can be established by statute, through the creation of appropriate boards, and should be in respect of specified policing functions - usually those referred to as 'visible policing' functions. It is generally accepted that such regional and local accountability is not appropriate to policing tasks such as the maintenance of a database and requisite information systems, criminal records and fingerprinting, maintenance of forensic laboratories, specialised crime units such as : organised crime; narcotics; car-theft; missing persons; internal security; protection of endangered species: smuggling, customs and exchange control; specialised commercial crimes; and certain kinds of public order policing. Where communities should have a legitimate claim to hold their local police to account is in respect of ordinary crime, patrolling, and policing of public events. In this regard the public should have a right to monitor reaction times by police to calls by community residents, the capacity of the police to take preventative measures against criminal activity, traffic policing, and the general behaviour and demeanour of the police on the beat or in charge offices.
None of the above concerns necessarily requires a regional or autonomous police force. If anything, contemporary theory on accountable policing suggests greater civic participation at a local level (not a regional level) in order to ensure that police are responsive to the public. Such measures could for example go hand in hand with management boards/public complaints bodies/accessible and independent investigative units. In short there is nothing in the demand for 'accountable policing' which necessarily requires autonomous, regional police forces. On the contrary it is the demand for regional police forces which is driven by a hidden, perhaps sinister agenda.
There are a number of good reasons to oppose the disintegration of the SAP into regional, autonomous police forces.
5.1 It is certainly arguable that available resources in South Africa do not permit the huge duplication of functions, units and expenses incurred in replicating nine or ten training and other support institutions for the nine regional police forces and the national police service.
5.2 The experience in the USA and elsewhere suggests that where policing forces are fragmented the standard of training and other support services are likely to diminish on account of the lack of resources.
5.3 There is no evidence to suggest that regional police forces are more human rights conscious or non-discriminatory than national police forces. In fact the experience in the United States suggests just the opposite. The national agencies had to be called in to force local and regional police forces to uphold basic human rights or to prevent their complicity in perpetrating racism in the southern states.
5.4 It is critical in South Africa that national effort be undertaken to retrain and create an appropriate police force in line with the values in the Constitution, more specifically, respect for human rights and dignity, appropriate restraints in the use of force and violence, the institution of a culture of public service, non-racialism, gender sensitivity, and to ensure that policing resources be reallocated on a fairer and more equitable basis, (i.e. to communities who have been historically neglected).
5.5 Regional and local police forces are particularly susceptible to the persecution of regional 'outsiders'. Such police forces have no national perspective and can accordingly replicate the prejudices of the communities in which they work. In addition, in South Africa, such regional police forces would necessarily have a predominantly ethnic exclusive composition (e.g. Eastern Cape, Natal, Western Transvaal, Northern Cape etc.). This does not bode well for outsiders living in those regions. Although it is often argued that members of a police force should be drawn from the members of the community in which the police force is located, it is precisely for the reasons mentioned above that the police in India, consciously strove to avoid the construction of homogenous police units and instead attempted to create through the police force a model of the religious, language and ethnic diversity of the nation.
5.6 The most compelling concern regarding regional police forces is that such forces will become regional militias. Such a development holds out the spectre of a Yugoslavia. This impression is fortified by the attitude of some homeland leaders and 'their' police and the express mention in the KwaZulu/Natal Constitution of the need for regional militias. In South Africa we already have the experience of the Bantustan Police and there has been very little to commend it, and a lot from which we can draw only the most adverse conclusions.
5.7 It can certainly be argued that corruption in the police force is as likely, and indeed more likely, to occur amongst regional police forces as it is in a national police force. Regional police forces bring the loci of policing and political power closer together and provide very direct and close dependency linkages. (See for example the experience in many US cities where police chiefs used to be dependent on 'city hall').
5.8 There are good policing reasons to avoid the construction of artificial boundaries and barriers (geographical or legal) between police forces. It makes the task of policing more difficult and raises serious problems in regard to the jurisdiction of one police force in regard to crimes committed in one area and where the suspects have crossed the border into another area. It is precisely these problems that the South African Police complain of in regard to the existing Bantustan Police and vice versa.
5.9 The existence of regional police forces in other countries arises out of distinct historical conditions and, if anything, the tendency throughout the world is for greater centralisation and co-ordination of policing agencies in the interests of crime-prevention.
In short, there is no compelling reason to opt for regional autonomous police forces, and there are a considerable number of dangers which such police forces present. The apparent concern which motivates the call for regional police forces can be accommodated within a framework which provides for statutory (and if necessary constitutional) requirements of accountability by police services, and even then predominantly at a local or district level. The idea of a national police force being subjected to local and regional controls and standards but being responsible for the overall training and maintenance of a national police force can be borrowed from many countries, including some federal states.
Some of the ANC's pronouncements and criticisms of the police have been labelled as either inconsistent with ANC policy, or as knee-jerk reactions. In part this may be the result of an absence of a developed policy on policing. In part it results from particularly repressive and abusive SAP behaviour in some areas or at the hands of some units - notably ISU units. However the impression has been created that the ANC's criticism of the police is unselective and undifferentiated - that all policemen are to blame for all incidents relating to crime and violence (thereby also absolving all other parties from responsibility). To the extent that this may be so, it should be avoided. Such an approach does not distinguish between initiatives and conduct in line with our demands and that conduct which deserves sharp rejection, between police who are supportive of the transition and those who actively oppose it, between those police members who are themselves victims of racism and those who perpetuate racist attitudes. Furthermore some reactions and criticisms are delivered without concrete demands for improvement, without follow-up, without reference to the need to bend the police to the dictates of professionalism and accountability.
The impression that police will be castigated whatever action they take reinforces the worse police attitudes and insecurities. More importantly these general criticisms do not set standards, nor do they target the concrete unacceptable practices of the police. Accordingly they do not assist in the task of transforming the police. Indeed this type of approach has let the police off the hook. What is required is direct and specific criticisms and campaigns related to concrete reforms which must be followed up by action. At this critical moment it is of cardinal importance that democrats respond to or confront the police in a way which promotes the transformation that is so necessary.
The question may remain whether individual police members and the police forces as a whole, can make the transition to the new South Africa. This process is, of course, not an easy one. As the experience in eastern Europe and elsewhere shows, police who have worked in an authoritarian context are resistant to new ways of thinking. The choice lies with members of the SAP and the homeland forces. Case studies from other countries, such as Spain, indicate that authoritarian and oppressive police forces can adapt to a new and democratic climate. There are a substantial number of policemen and women who are faithful, or would be faithful, to an ideal of professional, non-racial, non-sexist, impartial policing in a democratic society. Indeed such police officers, white and especially black, have a personal career interest in creating an environment where policing is a respected, popular profession, and in which their sacrifices are properly appreciated. Indeed, the possibility of a democratic South Africa opens up the opportunity for a more rewarding career in the police, as well as the creative development of new policing roles in a challenging environment. Police officers who would welcome this opportunity need to be encouraged and reassured.
Furthermore undifferentiated threats to the job security of all policemen is shortsighted and does little to create the confidence in the transition, which is necessary for policemen and women to face an unclear future. The failure to give such an assurance to at least police professionals is short-sighted. Like the random assassination of police, it sets back the possibilities of transforming the police. It actively encourages the police to close ranks around the lowest common denominator of existing police culture. As it has already done, the ANC must condemn these attacks on police members and explain why it does so.
It goes without saying, however, that in the normal course, many policemen and women may resign from the force as the transition enfolds. This is so because the original motivational impetus to join the SAP will have disappeared for those who cannot or will not work in a democratic and non-racial environment. The real danger is that the police en bloc, or a large body of them, will from within the police force, or from without, constitute a bitter but trained reactionary force bent on derailing the process or sabotaging the fruits of democracy. As an ANC Youth League position paper on the police has commented:
"If our movement is to seriously curtail the existent right-wing threat against transition, we ought to realise the need to cultivate the propensity to accept change instead of resisting it."
It is for this reason too, that the task of transforming and remoulding the South African Police must take place in the context of a firm assurance of job security for those who will run the course.
Such an assurance cannot, of course, be offered to those who cannot or will not police in accordance with the values of democracy. There must be no attempt to disguise what these will mean for the police, including programmes of affirmative action and appropriate lateral recruitment.
The new values of a non-racial and non-sexist democracy are, after all, nothing more than the values of accountable professional policing. The police must introduce a statement, a code of conduct, which clearly indicates the primacy of the new values. Those who are opposed to these values, or are opposed to the process of transition itself, can clearly not be trusted with the task of policing the transition. They should be required to find employment in other institutions.