Researchers have made some sobering observations about just how bad political interference in policing has become.
While there is still a long way to go before the claims made by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi are verified, he has opened the eyes of South Africans to how the world works under the ANC.
That reality is that the South African Police Service serves and protects the ANC – or, more correctly, it protects one faction against the other in the ongoing and increasingly nasty fights within the party to get close to the feeding trough.
Researchers Ivor Chipkin and Jelena Vidojević make some sobering observations today about just how bad it has become.
Many of us have suspected this for a long time, but Mkhwanazi’s accusations – about the involvement of top political figures in the world of organised crime – have focused our attention.
The researchers say the police leadership has effectively stopped policing certain categories of crime – the ones their political comrades are involved in.
Police resources are also being “actively redirected as weapons of elite competition, pursuing political enemies and protecting allies within the ruling party”.
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While on-the-ground policing has been reduced, VIP protection has ballooned, indicating the level that the ANC’s bigwigs believe they are threatened.
The appointment by President Cyril Ramaphosa of Firoz Cachalia – a long-serving ANC loyalist – as the acting minister of police, they say, “raises serious questions”.
Chipkin notes: “If the core problem with the police is that it has become embroiled in ANC internal politics, having an ANC insider head the department of police (even if only on an acting basis) threatens to compound the problem.”
Ramaphosa needs to implement changes – and quickly. All police appointments need to be overseen by an independent body, including the minister at the top.
We have to bring order to law and order.
