Mailbox: When is too much too much? DA slams ‘insanity’ in SAPS ranks
Key topics:
DA condemns transfer of corrupt, untrained brigadier to police leadership
SAPS accused of undermining discipline and public safety with the move
Growing outrage at ANC’s failure to address deep corruption in policing
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By Oliver Tichmann
Just days after Mr Ramaphosa's anaemic response to allegations of corruption and criminality run riot in the Police 'Services', with collusion from 'business people and Honourable Ones, this:
'DA condemns transfer of arrested, untrained Brigadier to head Moot Vispol, demands immediate reversal and proper suspension
'When is too much too much? What more must the gangrenous ANC do, before they are frogmarched out of office like the confidence trickster bums that they are?
'The Democratic Alliance strongly condemns the temporary transfer of a 29-year-old Brigadier who has never worn a SAPS uniform, never undergone formal police training, and is currently out on bail on serious corruption charges into the post of Head of Visible Policing (Vispol) for the Moot District in Pretoria.'
This would be beyond belief, beyond wildest imagination, beyond drug-induced hallucination, if this were not South Africa, land of the vilest possibilities.Truly, this is George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' come to life in our country. What we say in every forum and in our media is as far removed from our reality as the sun is from the moon.
Things have fallen apart. We are in crisis. We are in hell. The convicts run the institution without fear of consequence. The media play the game, floating woolly, fleecy news bites, while rampant crime, corruption, incompetence and buffoonery gnaw at the nation's jugular. Politicians sell their souls and their constituents for half an hour of fame plus salary slip. Never did Rome burn as fiercely to manic fiddle music.
The time for commissions, euphemisms, think tanks, national dialogues, oil and glibness from fat, fleshy political lips and dried stalks of long discredited, failed ideologies, is long past. Where is the scalpel to sever the gangrenous limbs? Where the cold steel of handcuffs for those who have plundered, raped and betrayed? Now, before we perish. Before we are poisoned for generations to come; when we will be spoken of as those whose foolishness, wilful blindness and deafness destroyed a nation of much promise. Who danced between the crazed fiddlers and the fire. Whose short sightedness and meanness of spirit chose greed, grievance and revenge over the future of our nation.
The Brigadier in question was one of several senior Crime Intelligence members arrested just weeks ago on charges including fraud, corruption and abuse of SAPS secret service funds. SAPS management now claims this is a “temporary transfer” under the Disciplinary Regulations, which allow for redeployment if a member’s presence in their current post is untenable. But nothing in the regulations justifies failing to impose precautionary suspension, which exists specifically to protect investigations and institutional integrity in cases exactly like this.
That this even needs to be pointed out is evidence of how far we have fallen; how deep into the mud and slime we have sunk. Too long ago, we crossed the line that integrity and decency used to hold, guarded by consequences. So many lines that we have crossed, so difficult to recross them.
Appointing an untrained, operationally inexperienced officer to oversee front-line visible policing undermines public safety, the credibility of SAPS and the morale of honest, hardworking police officers who have earned their rank through service and merit. It also places ordinary constables and sergeants under the command of someone unfamiliar with the realities and risks of policing on the ground.
A low budget movie on shenanigans in a banana republic would not dare include such a scenario. It does not meet the abysmally low minimum requirements for cheap movie scriptwriting. Yet it doesn't raise an eyebrow in South Africa anymore.That the ANC must go in order for our country to be saved, is as axiomatic as a + b = a + b. Those who waste breath debating this issue, as plain as the curve on Mantashe's midriff, are still frozen in 'liberation' cryo-sleep. They need to be liberated.