Chris Steyn (00:00.994)

President Cyril Ramaphosa has become famous for addressing the nation, but not addressing the problem. With me is Ian Cameron, the chairperson of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police. Welcome Ian. Seven years after first addressing the nation on the gender based violence crisis, he was back again last night with more plans. Your take on what he proposed.

Ian (00:16.008)

Good morning, thank you, Chris.

Ian (00:30.278)

Yeah, I'm going to be very blunt. The president lied. It's literally that simple. Last night, he obviously acknowledged that the government's response to gender-based violence and femicide has been insufficient. But, I mean, we all know that. And seven years after his previous address on the same issue, nothing has changed. In fact, it got worse. Now, the worst part is he speaks as though he is now coming in as this saviour to…

Ian (01:00.222)

…address the issue and to pull everyone together. But why didn't he listen in the first place? My question to him is why didn't he listen when we begged for help with the investigation of… Those are just four little girls that were murdered, some raped as well. And it took years to get justice for some of them, others were still waiting. You know, why now suddenly?

You know, it's so convenient to have this grand speech as though we need to trust him or that we should trust him, you know, a month before the next election.

And then he spoke about and announced a National Unresolved Case Audit within 60 days. Now, Chris, even if the police wanted to do a detailed case audit, they don't have the capacity to do it. They can do basic auditing from the Case Administration System as we know CAS but they don't have the capacity or the forensic depth to properly audit some of these cases.

He spoke of plans within 90 days and a funded forensic backlog plan within 60 days. Again a lie. I spoke to Acting Minister Cachalia over a year ago. I've said time and time again: spend time with universities, go to for example the Forensic Pathology Institute at the University of Cape Town, take hands with them. They are so far, in fact light years ahead of government. They didn't fix that. We took them on about the end of contracts that hadn't been renewed for machinery, chemicals, etc. for processing of DNA. They didn't listen. And now suddenly that the media picked up on a small amount of bodies that are piling up. Now suddenly a month before the election we see this speech.

Before I end about the president, we should never not welcome action or direction. So anything is welcome in that regard. But when he said that there's already increased Ekurhulen police visibility and he said that,

Ian (03:29.727)

…emphasised again the so-called lockdown that would be happening. It's a blatant lie to the public. I physically went there yesterday on unannounced visits to both Tembisa police station and Kempton Park. And Kempton Park, and we'll go into the details about the station now, but there was zero sign in any of those places, especially in Tembisa and especially in and around Kempton Park to indicate any kind of lockdown. And even if they wanted to do a lockdown, again, they physically do not have the capacity in terms of human resources or vehicles to do so.

Chris Steyn (04:08.161)

So it's election rhetoric. Also from Gauteng Premier Panyasa Lesufi who announced the lockdown with great fanfare

Ian (04:17.457)

Well, Lesufi didn't even have the know-how and capability of successfully driving a basic traffic warden programme. That programme is now bankrupt and has zero impact to show. In fact, some of the wardens have written to me asking, can we help because they're not getting any career development, salary, et cetera. There's no formalisation of their services. They were appointed illegally in the first place.

And now Lesufi wants to come and lecture us about how he already knows about the problems in Kempton Park. He wrote a statement yesterday after our visit saying that we shouldn't be grandstanding and we must recognise the improvement in the action that they have taken.

Let me sketch you a picture or an idea of what we experienced yesterday, Chris. I walked into the Kempton Park police station. First of all, there were four open access points without any access control at the station. Walked in the back through the whole parking lot, and wasn't stopped once. The gates are wide open while people are burning stuff outside the station on the sidewalks. In fact, while we were standing there, there was, I think it was a homeless man that was burning things on the sidewalk and something exploded and no one even blinked an eye….a small deodorant can or something in there and and when we walked into the station it was pitch black dark, no lights, no electricity…so started asking around, couldn't find uniform members. I found two uniform members having a chat in the charge office, asked the constable hey where's the station commander she says to me she thinks they're upstairs. I said where's the electricity, no it's off, don't know why. I said okay and your generator? Don't know. Okay, now we start walking up and I'll share the footage with you so you can use it as you see fit. Walk through, knock on doors, no one. Eventually… we find people, admin personnel that are working in their offices. We ask them where the station commander is. Eventually we started getting answers and what we found out is that this station had been applying for a generator for three years. It was approved several times.

Ian (06:43.455)

But every time when push comes to shove for the actual procurement it doesn't happen and the long and the short of it is that that station that's meant to be a safe haven for people that go there and they you know, sometimes in the most distressing times is not safe. It's not safe for members of the public or safe for police members.

The long and the short of it is, this station is falling apart and Lesufi wants to tell us there was immediate intervention. Him and the minister are speaking about lockdown operations. They can't even lock down a police station.

Chris Steyn (07:26.899)

Ian that police station, like many others, has a terrible reputation. People tell me they are too scared to go there and have their documents verified in case they suddenly find themselves married to a stranger or paying off an account they never opened. Some people say it's run by the Nigerians. And I understand the success rate of solving cases there is zero point zero four percent.

Ian (07:50.982)

Well, to give you an idea...Kempton Park has become one of the human trafficking hubs of South Africa. It's been identified not only nationally, but by, for example, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime as being a human trafficking hub. There are parts that are totally controlled by Nigerians and so too other groups.

Kempton Park is no longer a safe place and Kempton Park CBD especially is an extremely high risk area.

And if you look at the police station, there's no surprise as to why. They've been flipping acting police station commanders for months on end. It's a brigadier station, it's a station that's meant to be very, very well-capacitated. And to be honest, what should have happened now is instead of having all these meetings and kind of letting it be while they try and supposedly sort it out on a higher level, it should have been placed under something like an administration by the province where you've got an acting provincial individual that immediately restores discipline and order to that station. Immediately goes and checks that, for example, access control, the basic basic elements of a well-run police station, just to restore that and you would immediately see an improvement on certain performance indicators.

Chris Steyn (09:25.503)

If I'm correct that station is all also number one for reported kidnappings in the country.

Ian (09:32.67)

I believe it is one of the highest ones and it's important to remember that apart from the neighbourhood that it's in and the areas that it has to cover, it is very close to the airport. That would also play a role in terms of what or who comes in and out of the area. Crimes like or drug related offenses, trafficking offenses of any kind is a serious problem there - and it was so bad yesterday that even the acting station commander couldn't answer us on many things. It wasn't that she didn't want to, she literally didn't have all the answers.

So in terms of vehicles and so on we got more detailed explanations if I compare the process that we had and we'll talk about Thembisa now versus Kempton Park. Tembisa was with all the challenges at the station, I'm not moving away from that, but they immediately could give me all the data I wanted, well organised, you know, you could speak to experienced officers, etc. Kempton Park, different ball game.

Chris Steyn (10:54.326)

Meanwhile, Special Leave Minister Senzo Mchunu seems to be on a very expensive holiday, Ian.

Ian (11:07.237)

Yes, so there was a parliamentary question actually by a different party that asked how much had been spent on Mchunu while he is on special leave. So since he's been on special leave, he has cost taxpayers … let's just say 3.2 million while on special leave. And what I then did, I went and figured out, for that price, what or that value how many junior detectives could we have appointed? With that while he's sitting at home on holiday, we're struggling to make ends meet with policing. And it came down to 12 junior detectives their annual salaries that we could have covered If we didn't have to waste the money on him.

Though now the worst part still is that we seem to get stuck at the 3.2 million rand remuneration, while the bigger value issue is the fact that he still enjoys VIP protection, et cetera, and many of the other ministerial perks. Now, per minister they spend more or less 8 million rand annually on their VIP protection, let's call it their VIP protection benchmark. And that is the equivalent of 31 junior detectives that we could have appointed.

So in total, we could have appointed 43 junior detectives for the money that we have wasted on a minister that's not working at the moment.

And the President tells us that we now are prioritising violence against women and children. But he still sees it fit that VIP protection gets nearly 900 million rand more per year than family violence, child protection and sexual offences units. Or in other words, we could have just done the maths and funded more detective posts in the police.

Ian (13:23.715)

That they say it is getting the relevant attention is simply a lie. It's not. If it was, we would be cutting that. We would be making sure that FCS is getting 900 million more than VIP protection because the large majority of these people that drive around with Blue Light brigades didn't even have threatened risk assessments done on them to indicate that they were in need of some kind of protection.

Chris Steyn (13:51.33)

The President is ignoring calls to get rid of the special leave police minister, just like he did with the previous police minister. But why does the President seem to be scared of his powerful police ministers?

Ian (14:08.765)

I'm not sure if it's a matter, you know, a political, in a political sense, I'm not sure if it is because of, you know, that they're steering away from accountability of some kind. What, you know, I honestly don't know.

It's, there's this almost a...Jellyfish like response where you just you don't take direction You don't make a decision you you wait for the pressure to be so overwhelming that you need to just suspend or kick for the sideline; that's the the constant type of mindset that we're seeing with with many of these of these things

The fact that they don't have a strong and capable leader at a place like Kempton Park police station and even during this whole crisis didn't immediately intervene to ensure that those things are changed tells you that even where the decisions are made, there is no solid direction and there is no real implementation of strategy to operations. Everyone wants to talk about the plans and the strategy but the basics of transferring that strategy to operations is just absolutely non-existent.

So why he protects them? I don't know, but the long and the short of it is they are wasting our money and it is literally the result between///murderer being behind bars or not or… DNA evidence being tested or not. Do you know that the machines that used to automatically test and process DNA have been out of order for a very long time? The police are currently doing everything manually.

Now month after month we write, we ask, we do oversight and some of the political leaders get quite snotty with us when we do oversight because then they say why didn't you speak to us? But when we do speak to them they simply don't listen, they don't respond.

Chris Steyn (16:10.387)

Ian, any other crisis that has landed on your desk since we last spoke?

Ian (16:16.113)

I think maybe I can give some feedback on Sky, the police dog. So quite difficult. I had a very positive discussion with the police general and his team that are doing the internal investigation. And we agreed that I would support their internal investigation. And they put certain guarantees on the table to show that they aren't just going to let

Ian (16:46.047)

… it disappear. So they have until the 9th of October before they need to present to the National Commissioner.

But what I found out in the last 24 hours was quite rough. We finally received, after quite a few letters, I have received the final pathology report on Sky - and I think it's important that the public knows exactly what happened to her, what was found during Skye. post-mortem.

The first thing was that Skye had multiple fractures across both front legs. So on the left she had a fractured bone that protruded through the skin and that was one of the open fractures and then fracture-related wounds estimated to have been approximately 12 to 16 hours old. So you can just imagine how long that dog was in the pain that she was in.

She was found alive but unresponsive when they found her in the blood-filled cage and she had extensive wounds, bruising and damage to her skin, muscles and the surrounding tissue - I'm reading it from the report now - and severe exertional muscle breakdown with associated kidney changes and acute damage to her heart muscle. Injury is considered likely to have been imminently fatal had she not then eventually been euthanised.

She had severe dental wear across all her teeth that could not be explained by her age. The pathologist recommended investigating compulsive behaviour as a possible cause. And I can go through it. It's very, very actually traumatic to read through. But it's just to give feedback that we're not letting it be.

The NSPCA has also reached out again and their process is ongoing. One question I do have for them is what happened during their previous inspections? What were their findings and what did they follow up in terms of those findings? And the same goes for the Veterinary Council. And then in terms of the police, know that IPID has taken over or is also doing an investigation.

And I have since compiled a close to 300 page dossier for the police's internal…

Ian (19:15.603)

…investigation with every single bit of information regarding the parvovirus, other dogs, dogs that were unnecessarily euthanised and so the list goes on that we've submitted. So we're not going to let it go and I'll communicate as the process continues.

Chris Steyn (19:36.737)

Thank you. That was Ian Cameron, the chairperson of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police. Speaking to BizNews, I'm Chris Steyn.

Ian Cameron: You lied blatantly, Mr President