After over 100 days in the job, South Africa’s Police Minister Senzo Mchunu has been praised for “really taking on the senior management of the police” instead of attending funerals and saying “outrageous things” like his very unpopular predecessor Bheki Cele. His good report card comes from civil rights organisation Action Society’s Juanita Du Preez. However, she is not handing out any stars to Justice and Constitutional Minister Thembi Simelane, who is also fighting corruption allegations. Du Preez says that cases are staying on the court role for even longer now. She also comments on some of the shock findings in the Auditor General’s latest report on the South African Police Force. Among these is that it takes between eight and 35 minutes for the 10111 number to be answered – if it is answered at all. She further laments the exodus from the police of experienced detectives who cannot possibly manage loads of between 300 and 400 cases each.
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Extended transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Chris Steyn (00:02.494)
South Africa’s new Police Minister has had a hundred days to try and outdo his very unpopular predecessor. Let us get his report card from Action Society’s, Juanita Du Preez. Welcome, Juanita.
Juanita Du Preez (00:17.24)
Thank you very much for the opportunity to discuss the things that lie close to our hearts.
Chris Steyn (00:23.22)
Well, I don’t think anybody envies the minister who has to outdo the previous Police Minister. But how do you think he has done…if you had to give him a symbol? A, B, C.
Juanita Du Preez (00:35.81)
Hmm. It is very difficult to after a hundred days to give a symbol, but we’ll give him a preliminary report because we are seeing very good things.
We hear of Operation Shanele that’s doing well and people are being arrested all the time. It seems like there’s a buzz, there’s something going on.
He’s not just, in fact, I haven’t seen him at one funeral like his predecessor. So of course he should have respect for the people who lose their lives. But that was actually almost the only thing that we saw Bheki Cele do and then saying outrageous things.
So we are very excited to see where he goes. From our connections…Some people work closely with him, they also have good things to say about him.
Things that we are excited to hear about through the Grapevine is that he is really taking on the senior management of police.
And that is what Action Society has been saying all along. The problem lies not with the dedicated police officers who’s doing their work on ground level. They are doing their work. They really want to do their work. It’s the resources that’s the problem and the caseload that is the problem.
But he, so we have been saying that look at senior level of the Police Service because that’s where the problem lies. People claiming big fat salaries and they are not actually doing what they are supposed to do and not doing the best for the people working below them.
Chris Steyn (02:23.102)
Okay, so you’ll give him a pass.
Juanita Du Preez (02:26.392)
We’ll give him a pass for now. We are seeing a light in the tunnel. So that’s already better than what we had.
Chris Steyn (02:34.036)
However, the Minister of Justice has had a rather dramatic first 100 days in office. How would you rate her?
Juanita Du Preez (02:43.948)
Yes, we’re not so excited – and the problem what we see also on ground level and that is where we work, cases were always on the court rolls for long times but it seems like it is even longer now….for example, we have cases that is on the court roll since the incident happened, it’s been three and a half years and what we see now is people just go to court, they take days off their work, they have to get transport money to be there, and then the case is just postponed. There’s not even any progress in the case moving forward. It’s just postponed because the court rolls are so full. That’s what we are told and what we see as well.
But then shouldn’t there be more courts? Shouldn’t there be longer working hours? Because we also see sometimes there’s always the lunch hour, there’s always the tea hour, there’s always tjaila at three o’clock. Shouldn’t courts maybe continue longer? Shouldn’t there be magistrates and judges working longer hours to get through the caseloads? In America, we have night court. So, why should we not have this in South Africa? Because there’s obviously a problem. How can it be that justice is not swift? And in this case, it moves at a snail’s pace. People reliving that trauma again and again and again, and nothing is happening. So that’s just the court part.
And then what I already touched on, the magistrates and the judges, we know that there are also problems with their remuneration. They offer a really wonderful service. It’s necessary and they should be paid what they are worth. And that goes for the prosecutors as well. Give them what they are owed. Make sure that they have good working conditions. Make sure that they can do their job without being in a situation where…
Juanita Du Preez (05:00.17)
they cannot feed their family because their pay is not good enough so maybe they take something under the table because if you have to choose between feeding your family and …, I don’t know, can we really? I won’t do it but you might think about it so that is a problem that could occur.
Chris Steyn (05:23.595)
Well, she’s also been fighting the VBS alleged links. So you haven’t seen an improvement there. So, she’s not getting an early promise sticker or early promise star issued.
Juanita Du Preez (05:29.307)
It does take a lot of time.
Juanita Du Preez (05:40.134)
No, no, we’re not handing out gold stars for her. I know it is a big job, but it is why in other portfolios do we see big moves and we see it not in an important, very important portfolio like that of Justice.
Chris Steyn (05:52.06)
Mm. Mm.
Chris Steyn (05:58.654)
Now, meanwhile, the Auditor General has presented his report on the South African Police Force to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police. What are the most shocking and concerning findings in his report, Juanita?
Juanita Du Preez (06:14.156)
Well, for us, sadly, it was not shocking, or let me rather say, it wasn’t surprising, it is still shocking. But it is something that we’ve been saying since Action Society started. One of the things is that the 10111 number is not working as it should. It takes between eight and 35 minutes for them to answer the phone – if it is answered.
And then that agrees with the surveys that we’ve done under normal South Africans where they say they would rather call a private company, a private security firm or the Neighborhood Watch, anybody but the police because they know they will get a response. And it is actually so sad because now you have to pay extra to have somebody to protect you in an emergency. If it takes between eight and 35 minutes just to answer the call, then you’re gonna be dead by that time. You’re not gonna get help. Then they will come out maybe a day or two later and do the fingerprinting and so on, sadly. So that was the crime scene. So that was shocking or disappointing.
Chris Steyn (07:26.942)
The crime scene.
Juanita Du Preez (07:35.966)
We know that they are testing in MidRand, which is the biggest call center for the 10111 number. They have a testing to improve it. So we do hope that sooner rather than later, we will see good results and that people will start building their trust in the police again and in the 10111 number.
Some of the other things that we were or something that I can say that we were impressed with, and I’m saying that cautiously, is that the the buccal sample crime database, that it wasn’t as behind, it was still not 100 percent, but there’s been big strides in that. And that is wonderful because now we know that when offenders go on a certain schedule, goes into the… or arrested… into jail, they have the cheek swab, which is the buccal sample and put on a database and then we can link them to other crimes if there’s re-offenses. So probably it will stop them from re-offending because they can be linked to anything else they do in future. The sad part is that it’s only from a certain time and it’s only for certain schedules of crimes. Hopefully it can be, it would be ideal if anybody gets arrested, you take a buccal sample, put them in the database, then you can start seeing a trend. And then we can stop crimes from happening or more serious crimes from happening because they will be on a database and you can link them to whatever other crimes they were involved with. So we are cautiously optimistic and happy, satisfied with that progress that’s been made.
Some of the other things were the detectives and we’ve been speaking about this so long even though there were many police officers employed on the ground after well sometimes just a three month training; sometimes they go through a bit of a longer training but at least the visibility part is there but the problem is the experience is not there; the detectives aren’t there so now you have people who haven’t done it with a mentor
Juanita Du Preez (10:02.302)
They are supposed to do the job and in any job, never mind as important as protecting people’s lives, you need to work with a mentor because you can learn it from somebody in theory, but doing the job is something completely different. And that’s why we feel the mentorship is so important.
Again, coming back to why are there not more experienced people staying in the police? Because of the way they are treated, because of the caseloads that they have, because the senior management is not taking care of the people below them. That’s very important. And we really want to always praise the people on the ground who is doing their jobs. We are not praising the ones on top who aren’t doing their work and making it difficult for the ones on the bottom to do their work. So the detectives, you do need experience to be a detective. And now we have them just going out working and that was also in the Auditor General’s report. We have them leaving the service to go and work for private companies. Who can blame them because then they don’t have to work on 300, 400 cases. It is humanly impossible for one person to work on as many cases and a case is not solved in one day. So you don’t, you will have to solve a case in every single day of the year if you work 24/7 it is impossible. So we are very disappointed in that and we hope that the police could maybe find a way to bring back the talent that’s been leaving to be mentors to teach the young ones coming in to show them how it works because it’s detective services…also with the network that you know; you can’t just go in cold and people will speak to you and give you information. You need the training, you need the mentorship, you need the years of experience to really do the job properly on your own. So yes, we’re not very satisfied with the rate of detectives leaving and…
Juanita Du Preez (12:18.767)
the caseloads that they have to deal with because it affects all South Africans.
Chris Steyn (12:24.394)
It must be putting extra pressure on you guys at Action Society because more and more people must be turning to you because they’re not getting official help.
Juanita Du Preez (12:34.956)
Definitely. Also in the cases that we are investigating, we see so many times where it goes to court and then the NPA says or the prosecutor says there are so many queries outstanding, send it back for further investigation. Then it’s delayed again. Then we have to wait months and months again for the case for them to further investigate. And that should have been there when it went to court; it shouldn’t be sent back and delayed and delayed and delayed because evidence also don’t last forever. People disappear, fingerprints gets worked over. If you don’t do it right from the start, it is not going to be as easy when you try to do it a month or two afterwards.
Chris Steyn (13:24.778)
Exactly, and you are providing support in many big cases. Is there one you would particularly like to mention today?
Juanita Du Preez (13:31.788)
Well, it is actually so nice to finally or to have cases which are finally concluding. We are excited every time that a case progresses to trial. And because then we can see, OK, something is happening. But in some cases, it’s still continuing.
We had a case and it’s actually bittersweet and I don’t know if you have to laugh about the absurdity, but we were so happy with the Mickey Ontong case. It was about a month ago or two months ago when her case concluded from when the incident happened when she was murdered to where they were sentenced, the two guys who murdered her. So we were, wow, that’s a record time. We were excited about 11 months. But the only reason it was only 11 months is because they plead guilty. So there was no trial. But even if they plead guilty, it takes 11 months for them to go to court.
But we are happy when a case progresses. It’s not as swift as we want to, but it does progress. It makes space for new other cases to come onto the court roll and to bring them justice.
So that was Mickey Ontong. We have some other cases also in this next week. We have trials starting in two cases. So we are happy when, I don’t want to even specify one, it’s just we are happy when we see the progress in any case that we take on because it is important for everybody to get justice when they are wronged. So, we are just happy when we see the progress and obviously when we see a conviction we are even more happy.
Chris Steyn (15:32.842)
Thank you, thank you. That was Juanita Du Preez if Action Society, speaking to BizNews about the challenges in the fight against crime and getting justice. Thank you so much, Juanita – and I’m Chris Steyn.
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