Police Minister Bheki Cele says police officers should not stand back and be killed in the line of duty when they face dangerous criminals.

“[The police should fight back] if they are confronted by cash-in-transit criminals and ATM bombers and when criminals engage with you and there is fire in that particular time. [Because], when the dust settles, I don’t want to pick up the bodies of dead police. The dead bodies must come from somewhere else,” Cele said to applause of residents gathered at a community imbizo at the Matsulu Open Sports Grounds on Friday.

Cele explained that these ‘criminals don’t carry broomsticks and feather dusters with them’. “They carry serious stuff and therefore the police also need to carry serious things, and they need to be serious as well. This is important. The police must work within the prescribes of the law and most importantly, they must protect the law with all the necessary working tools provided to them. To protect the law, the police need to protect their own lives – so, don’t die with the working tools at your disposal,” said Cele.

With regard to the fight against the scourge of gender-based violence, he instructed the police to prioritise such cases when they get complaints from the community.

He said in the last quarter, over 10 000 women were raped in just three months.

“Police, please help us. When women come to the stations to report domestic violence, don’t tell them to go back and negotiate with their partners. You are not negotiators. You know nothing about negotiating. If you want to negotiate, come forward and we will send you to Russia and Ukraine to negotiate there. Here you don’t negotiate, you arrest anybody who abuses a woman or a child. It is important for the SAPS to drop everything else and deal with the matters of abused women,” said Cele.

“Imagine your own mother being dragged into the bushes, forcefully undressed at gunpoint and repeatedly being raped. If men can have that picture when they are about to rape a woman, I am sure they will not continue.

“Find a way of getting out of the scourge. It is only men who are in a position to help us deal with rape. Men must make a decision that they are no longer going to rape, and there shall be nobody raped. We don’t need to speak and do a lot, we just need men to sober up.”