*Shoot to kill-death sentence without trial* Having grown up in a township where young boys and girls yearned for role models to give them direction; a place where inadequacies of education illustrated themselves in our communities more especially in January where matriculants now wonder what’s next for them, has made me understand the causations of crime within our society. A place where hope of alleviating poverty, is still a myth. Unfortunately choices and options that avail themselves to people that are subjected to such social ills have horrendous pathways that tend to end one’s life or lead them to the cold corridors of South African prisons. For most women the alternatives are inclusive of options such as prostitution, shop-lifting and gambling in township games known as “U-Mchina” or cards. Some have found minimal salvation in grant money and subject themselves to retail exploitation in stores such as Shoprite which have found a magnificent and loyal market in our townships despite their disgusting service to our people.
These are some of the social ills that still characterise urban poverty; poverty that is mostly over looked, due to the illusion that poverty is minimal in areas of urbanisation. Unfortunately such areas are those that are more susceptible to it (poverty) and it’s increasing as a result of the perpetual divisions between the rich and the poor. These divisions have become more ailing due to the fact that they are now class divisions between the black elite and the poor black majority. When South Africans went to the polling stations for the first democratic elections in 1994, they voted with the hope that the transformation of government would yield economic and political relief and moreover bring the promise land to the masses in the form of a better life. Most saw this as a new beginning for them and the newly elected government would by default be a government that would be more sympathetic and understanding towards the conditions that still terrorise the black majority of this country; until today, the masses still loyally vote for the liberation movement as options are non-existent in real terms in South Africa. It becomes a sad case when the very same government now unilaterally decides to set a blind eye on the conditions that ail the poor and opt to use military methods to deal with problems in our society. When I first heard the utterance “shoot to kill” by Commissioner Bheki Cele, I could not help but question the logic or obscure ideological connotation from which this mentality stems from. This route or manner of approach for addressing crime manifests lawlessness and violence amongst the people. It potentially has the element of destruction in society as this will encourage retaliation or retribution from those that will fight against the abuse of this “shoot to kill” tactic by the police force. In the place of respect, fear will emerge from the members of our society. It’s blatantly clear that such statements are pre-mature and cannot be condoned. The justification that was mumbled by the Police ministry brigade for this “shoot to kill” tactic was that it’s the best form of method to deal with thugs that choose to execute cops in a gun-battle. Now unfortunately you cannot implement such a law in South Africa due the short-comings of the whole SAPS. For one corruption in the SAPS is horrifically the major characteristics of the force, most people that join the force tend to buy their way in through bribery. Secondly skills are serious concern within the SAPS and sometimes it’s embarrassing that you find police officers that cannot even properly draft an affidavit let alone an official statement. Thirdly we have officers that tend to think by virtue of their uniform they are above the law. The abuse hawkers, commuters in roadblocks, they take bribes as opposed to dealing with cases. They abuse civilians in holding cells, the SAPS has been implicated in numerous cases where prostitutes were held in holding cells and raped by men in blue; deaths under police custody have increased. Lest we forget that organised crime cases tend to have the men in blue implicated highly. Now we ask where does the shoot to kill fit in from the above, well for any police officer that could potentially be implicated in the above can easily utilise the “shoot to kill” tact to get rid of evidence. The Independent Complaints Directorate has recently complaint that it has limited powers to deal with complaints bought against police officers in our country. We can’t have a police force that will be a law unto themselves. Yes there is a serious crime issue but unfortunately we cannot look at crime unilaterally without simultaneously addressing the causations. The SAPS has no clear transformation policy in place and racism is still an issue. We have a serious influx of foreigners for example, but that is no lee-way for police officers to abuse them as they please and this is exactly what is happening around the country; at the rate the Police ministry is going with the whole shoot to kill debacle, you would swear that there is a new award for the number of body bags that police officers bring in. The amendment of section 49 will not resolve anything instead it will create animosity between civilians and police officers. Let’s first achieve an environment that will curb young people from resorting to violent crimes. Some of the men that have resorted to such criminal activities, are men that strongly defended the revolution during trying times in the early nineties unfortunately the government has never had a plan in place to absorb them. They sacrificed their education in order to see political emancipation and now they have become statistics within our prisons or are buried by the bullet of the SAPS. This whole debacle reminds me of a sad story in the township where a Fidelity guard was parked outside a petrol station, due to the inadequate recreational activities that are minimal in the township, young children play in the street. A young girl mistakenly rolled her tennis ball under the van as she ran to go get it quickly, she was greeted with a rain of bullets and until today the family never got compensation for that. Now this is just Fidelity, a private security company, what more if law enforcers have been given a blank cheque to murder people equally just like criminals. A well-trained officer of the law will know exactly when to shoot and does not need the law to be amended for that. We have worked hard to eradicate injustice in our country and the process of transforming the law is far from over. Introducing a new form of death sentence will just take us back to the dark years of apartheid, the difference will now be that this will be sanctioned by our very own people. Phansi with the amendment of Section 49 phansi!! I remain Gugu Ndima National spokesperson (YCLSA) 076 783 1516 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. 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