Police brutality is policy

The system is working as intended [View this email in your browser]( March 11, 2021 [Mail & Guardian]( [Mail & Guardian]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Instagram]( [YouTube]( Hi there, A man died yesterday. Whether he was a bystander doesn’t matter. He was killed by a member of the South African Police Service. To witness the harrowing footage of Mthokozisi Edwin Ntumba’s last moments jolts even the most numb among us. Bongekile Macupe has pieced together the incident as told by witnesses. [‘Why am I being shot?’]( he is said to have gasped as he lay bloodied on the street. The answer to his question does not lie in platitudes. Police Minister Bheki Cele was this morning, hat not in hand, traipsing about Edenvale visiting Ntumba’s family, in yet another photo-op at a victim’s family home designed to offer some caricature of care. To police is to maintain law and order, but the word derives from “polis” — the Greek for “city,” or “polity” — via politia, the Latin for “citizenship,” and it entered English from the Middle French “police”, which meant not constables but government. “The police”, as a civil force charged with deterring crime, came to the world from England and is generally associated with monarchy — “keeping the king’s peace”. A country of extreme inequality requires responsible leadership and policing that is consistent with human rights law, with police held accountable for any unlawful use of force. This has not been evident since the establishment of the service. Cops in South Africa killed [someone every 20 hours last year on average]( according to statistics released late last year by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate. The 424 deaths reported represent a slight decrease from 2018/2019 when 440 people died “as a result of police action.” The cases of [brutal enforcement before and during the various stages]( of the Covid-19 lockdown wasn’t the work of a few bad apples, but was rather part of an unofficial government policy of police violence. It was more than 20 years ago when this mentality was first put into words: “When we visit criminals we will not treat them with kid gloves … We will unleash the police force on them.” In 1999 former safety and security minister Steve Tshwete made a big show of his “war on crime”, declaring: “We are going to deal with criminals in the same way that a bulldog deals with a bull … We are going to give them hell.” And hell is what citizens got. But SAPS has been losing this war on crime because the police’s opponents appear to be everyone but actual criminals. According to the World Economic Forum, South Africa [ranks dismally in terms of police reliability](. We see it in the words of former deputy safety and security minister Susan Shabangu who in 2008 told the police: “You must kill the bastards if they threaten you or the community. You must not worry about the regulations. That is my responsibility.” Deputy police minister in 2015, Maggie Sotyu, instructed cops to: “Treat heinous criminals as outcasts, who must neither have a place in the society nor peace in their cells! They must be treated as cockroaches!” In 2017 then police minister Fikile Mbalula said: “We must declare war against crime. We must declare crime as domestic terrorism.” With these instructions, we’d say policing in South Africa is working as intended. We live in a violent, crime-ridden country, you say. To quote advocate [Tembeka Ngcukaitobi]( “The government and its agents remain bound by law.” The crisis in policing is the culmination of a thousand other failures, including, but not limited to, failures of policy, training, education, social services, public health, criminal justice and economic development — all within a country so markedly unequal. The death we witnessed yesterday is evidence of this crisis. Using violence so reminiscent of our not-so-distant past is an indictment to all who hold our democracy dear, and the abusers should be dealt with swiftly. Yours in solidarity, Kiri Rupiah & Luke Feltham [Subscribe now]( Enjoy The Ampersand? Share it with your friends [Share]( [Share]( [Tweet]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( [Forward]( [Share]( [Share]( Copyright © 2021 Mail & Guardian Media LTD, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in to receive communications from the Mail & Guardian either at our website or by taking out a print subscription. Our mailing address is: Mail & Guardian Media LTD 25 Owl St BraamfonteinJohannesburg, Gauteng 2001 South Africa [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences or unsubscribe here.]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update subscription preferences]( Mail & Guardian Media LTD · 25 Owl St · Braamfontein · Johannesburg, Gauteng 2001 · South Africa