Durban – The eThekwini Municipality will support the police ministry’s proposal that metro police forces are done away with in favour of a single national police force, provided the plan is shown to benefit crime-fighting.
City manager S’bu Sithole said recently that, although there were pros and cons to the idea, as well as a need for clarification, if the plan was shown to improve policing, the municipality would support it.
The draft Green Paper on policing, drawn up by the Civilian Secretariat for Police, and currently out for public comment, wants the feasibility of a single police force investigated.
This would mean integrating the SAPS and metro police forces to “effectively manage the responses and governances of law”.
In addition to a single police structure being provided for in section 199 of the constitution, the paper says the metro police forces are less subject to the strict accountability imposed on the SAPS, which “in itself poses serious risks to our democracy”.
The plan to integrate the forces would eradicate this and strengthen the police force, it says.
Although the paper was still in the discussion stage, and legal issues needed to be looked at, Sithole said he was in favour of a strong police force.
“Policing at our level deals mainly with by-law enforcement. We do play a role in crime prevention, but this is largely in support of the SAPS.”
He welcomed the training proposals in the paper, which called for uniform training for all police officers.
However, issues such as by-law enforcement, as well as labour and employment matters, would have to be addressed before the implications of the proposal could be fully understood, Sithole said.
Zweli Mnisi, spokesman for Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa, said these issues, as well as what the police service would be called and whether or not ratepayers would still have to contribute to a metro police service, would be dealt with later in the process.
“We are still soliciting input from academia and experts, so operational and HR matters are semantics.
“There are many things that still need to be looked at, but the idea behind it is that we have multifaceted police officers who not only check seatbelts and driving licences, but are able to check for firearms and stolen vehicles.
“We want modern-day cops with the common denominator of fighting crime,” he said.
However, Johan Burger, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, slammed the proposal, saying that, not only was it unconstitutional, but it would hamper crime-fighting at local level.
“Section 199 of the Constitution, which they are citing, says there must be a single police service, but this is only saying that there can only be one national police force. They are silent on section 206(7) of the constitution, which says Parliament must provide for a municipal police service.
“What we expect will happen if this plan is adopted is that a national police service will only serve national priorities determined by national, or maybe even a provincial, head office. Local priorities will lose out,” he said.
Burger added that, not only did a local police service free up the the SAPS, but also provided for better visible policing in communities.
DA police spokeswoman Dianne Kohler Barnard said the party vehemently opposed the idea, as it was possibly unconstitutional and “nothing more than a political attempt to usurp the powers of provinces and metros where the ANC is not currently in government, or will not govern in the future”.
bronwyn.fourie@inl.co.za
The Mercury
