How Poor Leadership Undermines the Work of the South African Police Service
The number of senior officers being implicated in crime and corruption is eroding public trust and police morale, making it impossible for the SAPS to effectively perform its mandate.
Johan Burger, Senior Researcher, Crime and Justice Programme, ISS Pretoria
The South
African Constitution places the South African Police Service (SAPS) in the frontline
against crime and obliges it ‘to protect and secure the inhabitants of the
Republic and their property.’ At one level, this has been taken seriously and
in the last decade the SAPS has expanded to a huge organisation of more than
194 000 people, including approximately 160 000 trained police officials and
around 34 000 civilian support staff. Its
budget for 2012/13 is R62,5 billion, which represents 65,3% of the total criminal justice budget.
However, in order for the police to be effective against crime, it has to
ensure that the public has confidence in it. This will only occur if the SAPS
leadership consists of men and women who are highly skilled professionals with
the appropriate expertise and whose integrity is beyond reproach.
The question is whether the current state of
leadership in the SAPS is able to ensure that the SAPS becomes the type of
professional police agency that will be respected by all people.
There can
be little doubt that the many examples of senior officers being implicated in
criminal activity and corruption is eroding both public trust and police morale.
Furthermore, it is demonstrative of the extent to which effective leadership is
lacking in the SAPS. The leadership problem starts with who is appointed as the
most senior and the most powerful police officer, the National Commissioner of
Police. The previous national commissioner of the SAPS, Jackie Selebi,
who had no experience in policing when he was appointed by then President Thabo
Mbeki, made many poor decisions regarding the structure of the SAPS, for
example closing down important specialised units. In 2010 he was convicted on a
charge of corruption and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In July 2009
Bheki Cele was appointed by President Jacob Zuma and like his predecessor, was
not a career policeman, having previously served as a politician in the
KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government.
Cele soon gained
media prominence more for his often tactless, and some may argue, irresponsible
public utterances than for his police leadership qualities. In 2011 the South
African Police Union (SAPU) publicly accused him of nepotism, after the appointment
of close family members and friends to senior positions in the police. These
allegations followed shortly after the release of the report by the Public
Protector in February 2011 into alleged irregularities relating to the leasing of
office accommodation for the SAPS. The Public Protector found, inter alia, that Cele’s conduct in this
regard was ‘improper, unlawful and amounted to maladministration’. In October 2011, almost eight months after
the release of the report, President Zuma announced Cele’s suspension and the
appointment of a Board of Inquiry to investigate, amongst others, whether he acted
‘corruptly or dishonestly or with an undeclared conflict of interest in
relation to the two leases (police offices in Pretoria and Durban). The Board
concluded its inquiry in the first week of April 2012 and the country now waits
for its findings into whether Cele is fit to hold the position of SAPS National
Commissioner.
The consequences of poor choice of leadership
in the SAPS over the years are becoming abundantly clear. Allegations of
ongoing irregularities relating to the business of the SAPS’ Supply Chain
Management prompted President Zuma to request the Special Investigating Unit
(SIU) to investigate possible corruption in the allocation of contracts handled
by this division in August 2010. This investigation is not yet concluded, but
since it began its work, three generals connected to Supply Chain Management
took early retirement and another is currently suspended.
The Crime
Intelligence Division has also for many years been fraught with allegations and
reports of criminal conduct and abuse of power. For example, Mulangi Mphego,
head of the division during Selebi’s term of office, was accused of various
unlawful activities such as interfering with a key state witness, Glen Agliotti,
during Selebi’s corruption investigation. This led to criminal charges being
laid against Mphego and his subsequent resignation in 2009.
He was succeeded
by the now infamous Lieutenant General Richard Mdluli, who appears to be
protected at the highest level given that criminal charges of murder and
corruption have been controversially withdrawn in spite of a large amount of
evidence against him. Additionally, investigations into a substantial number of
separate allegations of Mdluli’s involvement in corruption into misuse of the
SAPS Secret Service Account have inexplicably been shut down.
A further example of how poor leadership at the
highest levels is undermining the SAPS can be found with the sudden closure of
the apparently successful Cato Manor Organised Crime Unit in Durban in March
2012. Members of the Cato Manor Unit were as recently as
February 2012 praised by a judge in the Pongola High Court for their
professional work on the case involving the ‘KZN-26’ gang, notorious for
cash-in-transit heists, robberies and murder. This followed sensational claims made by a police
officer charged with corruption that the unit was operating as a ‘hit squad.’
The unit was quickly closed down without the allegations against its members
being properly investigated first. Of concern was that a notice of intended
suspension was served on the provincial Head of the Hawks, Major General Johan
Booysen to whom they ultimately report
The closing down of the unit and attempts at suspending Booysen must be viewed
against the background of corruption and fraud charges being investigated by
the Hawks against a prominent Durban businessman, Thoshan Panday. According to
media reports the corruption charge followed the alleged attempt by Panday and
Colonel Navin Madhoe from the SAPS KwaZulu-Natal Supply Chain Management in
Durban to bribe Booysen with R2 million to assist Panday with the withdrawal of
the fraud charges against him. It has been reported that KwaZulu-Natal SAPS
Provincial Commissioner Monnye Ngobeni, had tried to halt the investigation
into Panday. She became a subject of the Hawks investigations after it emerged
that Panday had paid for her husband’s birthday celebration. Interestingly, the NPA
declined to prosecute her, alleging that there was ‘insufficient evidence’ to
prove that there was corruption involved in her relationship with Panday. Furthermore, the Sunday Tribune reported a link between
Edward Zuma, a son of President Zuma, and Thoshan Panday. Apparently, Edward
Zuma unsuccessfully attempted to exert pressure on Booysen to release a R15
million payment that was allegedly owed to Zuma by Panday and had been frozen
as part of a criminal investigation.
Booysen
successfully fought his suspension by approaching the Labour Court, which ruled
that he had been unfairly suspended. However, the court order was ignored by
powerful figures in the SAPS who went ahead with the suspension regardless.
Booysen was then forced to approach the Labour Court a second time to have the
suspension overturned once again and is back at work but facing an uncertain
future.
Ongoing
problems at the highest levels of the SAPS are starting to take its toll on
station level police men and women. On 10 April 2012 The Star
published an article titled, ‘Stress, frustration, wreck police force’, that
pointed out how allegations of mismanagement at the highest levels has tarnished
the image of the police and how it complicates the lives of ordinary police
members. The negative impact of bad leadership on the morale of police members
cannot be separated. A police service suffering from poor leadership and low
morale cannot effectively perform its mandate. The situation has clearly
deteriorated to the point where the credibility of police leadership at both a
political and operational level have been so severely undermined that external
intervention is sorely needed. The
Minister of Police who would ordinarily be responsible for addressing
leadership problems, now stands accused of interfering to protect Mdluli while
also irregularly benefiting from the Secret Service Account to the tune of R195
000 for renovations to his private residence and lying about it to the media.
The ISS
reiterates its call for a judicial commission of inquiry with strong powers of
investigation and subpoena and the necessary resources to allow it to
independently and authoritatively probe the allegations of corruption, their
underlying causes and then to make practical recommendations for corrective
measures. It is unfair to expect the many hardworking, honest men and women in
uniform to place their lives on the line when those at the helm of the organisation
have lost credibility.
