Cde Cedric,
I am sorry that I have not found the article you refer to. Google
brings up hundreds of articles related to this matter. Perhaps if you
could give me more clues?
What I must say I have never seen, is any allegation that there are
police officers in prison for shooting criminals, or for shooting
anybody else for that matter. I suspect that the number of police
officers inside prison for homicide is very few, although we know that
police do frequently shoot people in South Africa, whether alleged
criminals or strikers or demonstrators.
Police have not succeeded to eradicate crime. Now they say they need
extra permission to shoot people, using the firearms that have long
since been issued to them as a matter of course. I personally don't see
where there was a problem for them, before. We don't know of numbers of
police officers in jail for shooting criminals.
There is a credibility problem with these police when they say it is
our fault that they have not stopped crime, because we did not give
them an extra permission to kill more people.
It is always going to be a problem to kill people. Even a hardened,
experienced old police-person will not take lightly the killing of
another human being. The only people who can take such things in their
stride are those kind of people who are called psychopaths, because
they feel nothing. The police are nearly all very human and not
psychopaths. We understand that, but we can't give them a
constitutional pill to make the problem of criminals go away from the
police. No such pill exists. When it comes to criminals, the police
have a hell of a job. No doubt about it. But there is no constitutional
pill to make it better.
Changing the law changes nothing, in my opinion. Changing the law will
not un-confuse a confused police-person. President Zuma said enough,
when he said that if a suspect draws a gun in clear crime situation,
then armed police will presume that the gun is drawn with lethal
intent, and will act accordingly. The law will not change that. Even
now, no judge will complain about police shooting armed aggressors. But
then it had better not be a striker, or an innocent person, or a little
girl like the one Cde Gugu wrote about. The constitution cannot be
changed to say it is all right to kill just anybody. It's not all
right. It's already too easy to pull out a gun.
Cde Gugu wrote nearly 1200 well-argued words, and signed it with her
name and who she is. I personally think that is fine. I don't think Cde
Ggugu is going to do this every day. It's obviously part of her make-up
to feel strongly about this "shoot-to-kill" thing, and in that case, we
should know about it. It does not detract from her job. She is not a
statue or a ventriloquist's dummy. She is a political subject like any
other one.
I think Gugu's message should give us a sign, too, that not everybody
identifies with the police. Not everybody, when hearing the words
"shoot to kill" assumes that they will not be the ones in the
gun-sights of the police. Some imagine themselves in front of the
police and in the line of their fire and not behind them, and it is not
because they are criminals. "Shoot-to-kill" divides us in that way.
It is not only the same constitution we had a few weeks ago, but it is
the same problem, Cde Cedric. The basic political problem is that both
army and police are part of the "special bodies of armed men" (and now
women) who are mustered, fed and equipped for the fundamental intended
purpose of defending the ruling class against revolution.
The question then arises, which side are the actually-existing armed
men on? Is ours a revolutionary army - a red army? Or not? Is it a
people's police, a citizen force, indistinguishable, politically, from
the popular masses? Or is it the "thin blue line" that protects the
oppressor bourgeoisie from the justified fury of the working masses?
These are the real questions. Tinkering with the wording of the
constitution will not solve these revolutionary problems. In this
political context, the question of "shoot-to-kill" is just a dangerous
diversion, in my opinion. The question should be: How are we going to
politicise the police more, and better?
The political problem is also the solution to the crime problem, by the
way. When there is class unity between police and people, then there
will be true co-operation between them both to eradicate crime.
VC
sabelo gina wrote:
Comrades,
Over the weekend I read the newspaper article on this matter
that was talking about a section that is vague in the Act, which
confuses police when faced with danger of an armed fleeing criminal.
Can we reflect on that in the light of what police face and the number
of deaths that have happened in our country both of police and ordinary
citizens in the hands of the armed criminals. The moderator must get us
that article here in the forum then we engage.
There is also a constitutional decision on the matter, can we
use the same constitution that we were using few weeks ago in defence
of the unionisation in the army to argue this point rather than this
style from all of you including Dominic.It is a known fact that when I
present my personal views, I must say so.
Let us engage!
Cedric
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Gugu Ndima <[email protected]>
wrote:
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
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