MANDY WIENER: Police working to repair public trust

South Africans have long had a complex, difficult relationship with the police in the country. Much of this is deeply historic. For most of the population, the association of the police with brutality and the apartheid regime is entrenched. 

But post democracy, that relationship has also been frequently tested. Think of the killing of Andries Tetane, the Marikana massacre and the jackbooted heavy-handedness during the Covid lockdowns. 

Corruption within the police ranks has also eroded public trust in the SAPS. During the state capture era, this was at an all-time low as the intersection of politics and law enforcement was amplified. 

Despite that, there is still a latent respect for cops and there is largely rule of law in the country. If you break the law, you will be arrested and go through the court process. There also seem to be attempts to repair the public relationship with the SAPS, which is a service and not a force. 

Support for the police seems to me to be more favourable than it has been in a long time in response to the ‘shoot to kill’ approach against armed gangs in recent weeks. 

Of late, police task teams in KwaZulu Natal specifically, have been meeting fire with fire and there have been a string of shootouts in which ‘suspected’ criminals have been killed. 

In KZN alone, 17 suspects were killed by police in the past two weeks. Last Friday morning, three criminals were killed in a shootout in uMlazi. 

Not to be outdone, the police in the Western Cape killed eight suspects and arrested five in Mitchells Plan earlier this week. The gang was preparing to carry out a cash-in-transit heist. 

Voicenotes to The Midday Report have been overwhelming in support of the police with many openly insisting that the criminals must be killed. 

Lt Shadrack Sibiya, the Deputy National Police Commissioner, has been amongst those leading this approach as he has been mandated to deal with CIT gangs. 

He says the police are hard at work fighting crime and are only responding to violence directed at them.

“The police in KZN and everyone else in the country they are hard at work fighting crime and making sure they attend to those ruthless criminals. The police are really on the ground hard at work, making sure they arrest these people and where they are met with violence, they are able to respond to the violence. We have sent capable and competent teams on the ground to make sure they defeat these criminals because we cannot allow criminals to overpower the police. 

“As far as we are concerned as the SAPS, each and every scene where we get involved in a shootout, you will find that here are a number of AK47s and other assault rifles, heavy rifles. In a situation like those, remember the approach is normally the question is asked where was the intelligence? When the police receives information from the community that a certain group of criminals are going to commit cash in transit are at a particular house and they go an confront them before they commit the cash in transit, obviously they try and respond when they see the police coming and they shoot and that’s the only way to be able to respond,” Lt Gen Sibiya told me on TMR. 

Sibiya makes the crucial point that far too many police officers are being killed in the line of fire and the officers are left with no choice but to reciprocate. 

While I agree with that, I have also raised concerns about extra-judicial killings and that we must watch the watchmen.  For us to accept and support that the police are right to kill criminals, we also must trust that the people they are killing are indeed who they say they are. We must trust that the police are not abusing their positions of power. 

These are courageous cops who are putting their own lives on the line to crack criminal syndicates and they deserve every plaudit they get. 

However, we are not seeing the same degree of trust in the police when it comes to other crimes. 

The community in Katlehong evidently has no trust in local police to deal with Paseka ‘Pastor Mboro’ Motsoeneng. After a video of him wielding a panga at his grandchildren’s school emerged, high school students and other community members set fire to his Incredible Happenings church. Residents voiced their concerns about Mboro’s proximity to the police in the area and how the SAPS would not act against him. It's a classic case of vigilantism instead of allowing the law to follow its course. 

Since the emergence of an apparent military training camp near White River in Mpumalanga, there’s also been a degree of criticism of the police for allowing such a camp to take root. It was only once residents opened cases identifying perpetrators with similar identifying features that the training camp was identified. Ironically, it was good crime intelligence that led to the raid, yet the police are being criticised for a failure of intelligence. 

Work is clearly being done to improve policing and to also repair the trust relationship between citizens and law enforcement officers. This is crucial in the fight against crime. But we must never forget that while we must trust the cops to protect us and enforce the law, we cannot offer that trust blindly. It must be earned.