The police in South Africa today reminds me of the “kitskonstabels” (instant constables) the old National Party inducted into the police. Ill-trained and brutal, they were used for the dirty work of quelling unrest in the townships. Today, the government is throwing money at the crime problem, but while the police may be getting more bodies and more gear, but from what I’ve seen recently, they’re pretty pathetic, as a rule. Shouldn’t we be spending more money on training?

A comment on a previous post about the police noted that many of our cops — especially in the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Force — are overweight. Many do indeed appear too unfit to do much more than shoot a fleeing suspect in the back. That they don’t do so more often is probably a function of lack of firearm training, extraordinary facility in issuing “spot fines” (as bribes are known around here), or simply being unable to extract a weapon from the flab.

The lack of training goes way beyond fitness, though. Eye-popping CCTV evidence has been doing the rounds of a “drug raid” on Bohemia, a bar in Stellenbosch. Wouter Jonker, a student at Stellenbosch University, has a good collection.

What cop thinks firing a weapon into the ceiling of a two-floor establishment is a reasonable tactic during a raid? What cop believes throwing glasses at innocent patrons is an effective tactic? What sort of impotent cop needs to spray mace in the face of a girl sitting on the floor with her hands up? Would that be the same cop who committed sexual assault on an innocent bystander? What commanding officer can pull “evidence” from his breast pocket and wave it in the bar manager’s face? What sorry excuse for a cop is authorised to punch random people, men and women, in the face? What cop is permitted to flat-hand people so their ear drums pop? What cop is authorised to confiscate cameras on the scene? What incompetent cop raids three bars, and manages to find just six pieces of hashish, 150g dagga and some cocaine? Mothers find more in the pockets of students’ dirty laundry! What braindead cop leaves what meagre evidence they could find behind? And what cop with any shred of self-respect does all this, but makes not a single arrest?

The cops are largely denying what the CCTV footage clearly shows. The bullets in the ceiling, they say, might have been put there by “hostile owners”. Presumably they also put the muzzle-flashes in the video, the joints in the CO’s pocket, and the hand in the poor girl’s panties.

Another post on Jonker’s site quotes the proper procedure for a drug bust in a public entertainment venue. It resembles what we saw here in exactly no respects. Every single one of these cops belongs in jail.

This scene isn’t isolated. Similar raids happened in several other venues around the same time, including at a Johannesburg joint named the Bohemian and several other Stellenbosch venues. At least I know not to call my retirement hangout the Bohemian anything.

I was shocked to hear one of the girls interviewed on TV say that the police told them to “sleep, sleep”. Where did they learn that phrase? The reason I ask is because I have heard that curious wording only once before, ever. It is hard to forget, because the surprising turn of phrase came from the three armed men who tied me up and robbed me blind last year. While we’re on the subject of my own robbery, two things seem relevant. One is that a radio call came in while the police were taking my statement, describing a robbery in progress three blocks away. The description of the suspects matched my attackers. I said so, expecting the half-a-platoon that attended the scene to jump in their cars and give chase, but no. They showed no interest whatsoever. I did receive a call from the police six months later. They hadn’t caught anyone, and they hadn’t found my car. They didn’t need any more information either. They just wanted to check whether I had, in fact, reported an armed robbery. They were working on it, they said. Yeah right.

Cut to Kwazulu-Natal, where a bunch of students had been making unreasonable demands, and even after they were met, carried on protesting and burning rubbish in the streets. Don’t get me wrong. They deserved to be locked up, the lot of them. They deserve to be expelled, too. Taxpayer money is wasted on their future.

Then the “adults” arrive, in the form of riot police. I was transfixed by the television coverage. What I saw was not a crowd control scene, with lines of riot police in shields and helmets deftly splitting the crowds, driving them back and isolating the troublemakers. It was like something out of a war movie. Stun grenades were fired haphazardly into a crowd, not to drive them back, but apparently to confuse and panic them. Surefire recipe for trampling, that is. At another location, a fellow who’d seen too many urban warfare cutscenes was sniping at running protestors with rubber bullets. Guy runs across an alley, a block away, and gets one in the side for having the effrontery to flee. Gotcha! Another officer stood firing down at students scrabbling through a ditch, trying to get out of the line of fire. No wonder serious injuries were sustained. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the crowd had turned really ugly, and felt itself fully justified to shoot back at the police, over such aggression.

Who trained these idiots? Isn’t there anyone in the police service that’s dying from shame at all this? Surely there are competent police officers, with adequate training, that can handle mild student protests, petty public nuisance complaints or a minor drug bust without charging in all guns blazing like Rambo on acid?

There can’t be all that many criminals in South Africa, judging by the number of prior crimes newly arrested criminals appear to have committed. Instead of budgeting for bulking up numbers and equipment, as the government has done, perhaps the crime rate — and the security of our would-be 2010 World Cup visitors — would benefit rather more from decent training.

Start with a fitness programme (hint: fatties can’t chase criminals, and weaklings can’t fight them). Then add some firearm training (hint: you can’t fire live ammo in crowded pubs, and you don’t point loaded weapons at unarmed patrons). Then perhaps a course on basic procedures in dealing with civilians (hint: you can’t grab her tits, you can’t mace people who are already down and quiet, and you can’t slap bystanders into hospital). Teach public order cops to restore public order (hint: don’t panic a crowd, don’t anger it by shooting fleeing protestors in the back, and don’t turn an unruly protest into a major warzone). Add to that some tips on how to at least pretend to want to catch criminals.

This isn’t a computer game. You aren’t special forces in an urban war. Just wearing a uniform and drawing a salary and bribing the public and speeding on public roads and going on strike once in a while doesn’t make you an effective police officer.

Finance minister Trevor Manuel promised money for more men and equipment in his budget speech. But before we create any more “kitskonstabels” and issue them with live ammo, perhaps it might be a good idea to invest some public money in training.

The public invests our police force with awesome powers. Not the state, or the law, but the public. The woman who got pepper-sprayed, the guy who got deafened, the woman who got punched in the face, the woman who was “body-searched”, you and me, and the thousands of other victims of police neglicence, incompetence, indiscipline and outright brutality. Many of whom don’t have CCTV cameras or fancy video phones to record the evidence.

We invest the police with awesome powers. If they abuse those powers, perhaps they should be taken away. If they demonstrate sheer incompetence, or violent arrogance, or blatant disregard for the law they’re sworn to enforce, perhaps those powers should be taken away. I would have thought South Africa has had enough of the state’s jackboots stamping on the faces of innocent civilians.

Which brings us right back to the argument for private police forces, subject to competition and contract obligations. Another comment on that original post said it’d be a bit like the Wild West. Well, what does all this look like? All the Bohemian needed was a pair of swinging saloon doors.

But failing private police forces, can we at least train the idiots we have, before we hire more incompetent bullies with inferiority complexes, and issue them with assault rifles and a licence to assault? Before anyone else gets hurt?

A calamity is unfolding. A disaster wrought, not surprisingly, by the lack of a free market in broadcasting in South Africa. I’ll quote from local rock DJ Benjy Mudie’s webpage:

Dear Rock of Ages listeners & fans,

Those of you that were listening to the show last Thursday would have heard the sad news that Rock of Ages is coming off the air at the end of March 2008. Radio 2000 has advised me that they are not going to extend the show’s contract and so after nearly 5 years of playing the best in classic and new ‘retro’ rock, both international and local, South Africa’s only rock show, Rock of Ages, will broadcast it’s last show on Thursday 27th March 2008.

There has been an outpouring of disappointment and anger at this decision and scores of listeners have emailed the station voicing their unhappiness and I understand that there are several petitions doing the rounds as well. If you would like to have your say on this please email the Program Manager of Radio 2000, Cuthbert Mashigo at cuthbert@radio2000.co.za. I would respectfully appeal to you to keep your comments polite, non-personal and non-political. I’m not sure if the protests will result in a reversal of this decision, all things are possible ….. however the important thing is that you have the right to speak out if you should choose, the SABC is a public broadcaster and as such is accountable to the people.

What is it with the SABC and rock music? Even PW Botha’s censors had more respect for rock. (Or maybe it just scared them.)

This is a disgrace. And a disappointment. It’s sad. And you and I pay with our tax and TV licence money for the SABC. You do pay your TV licence, don’t you?

But even if you don’t, it’s not like Benjy can get together with the likes of Chris Prior, Neil Johnson, Phil Wright, Rafe Levine, Leon Economides, and David Blood and start a rock/blues/jazz/metal station of their own. You can’t get frequency without the government’s permission. The state-owned SABC sits on most of it, and has no incentive to use it more efficiently.

You also can’t get a broadcasting licence without the government’s permission, and the government decides “what the market can bear”. Since when? Why shouldn’t the market decide what the market can bear? I’d reckon there’s a pretty reasonable niche market for rock, and it’d do just fine, especially if you spice it with some blues and jazz. You’d reach a pretty diverse audience, too, from teenage rockers to old hippies who would have remembered the sixties if they hadn’t been there, from avant-garde black professionals to angry white metalheads, from alternative and goth chicks to midlife-crisis bikers. But if I’m wrong, or these people have no money to spend on advertised products, why shouldn’t a rock station be allowed to go bust if it turns out there’s no market for it?

Here’s the text of my own e-mail to Mr Mashigo:

The last time I felt driven to write to a radio station I had to use a fax machine, because e-mail wasn’t around. That was in 1993, to express my disgust that Radio 5 was firing Chris Prior, who at that time had by far the best rock show on radio. I still enjoy the home-made tapes I made of his features as a teenager. In fact, the bulk of my education in music is thanks to Chris Prior, yet the SABC unceremoniously dumped him.

Then Benjy Mudie picked up the baton with his excellent Rock of Ages show, introducing listeners to excellent music, both old and new, that simply doesn’t get airplay anywhere else.

Now I hear his show may be cancelled.

Because of our restrictive licencing regime, it simply isn’t possible to create new genre-based radio stations in the vein of Classic FM, which means that SABC Radio, as the public-service broadcaster, has a responsibility to cater for all needs and tastes not covered by commercial stations. It also has the resources to do so on a channel like Radio 2000, which is usually given over to sport commentary or simply anonymous auto-queued music (good though it often is).

Other than the occasional news and talk radio, I do not listen to any music radio other than Benjy’s excellent show. I feel like I belong, there. It would be a great shame were it to be taken off air. It would also be contrary to the SABC’s public service mandate, I suspect. Since I pay tax and TV licences, and a private rock station won’t get licenced in a month of Sundays, this is most distressing.

Let’s help Benjy get back on air. Thursday evenings won’t be the same without him. E-mail Mashigo now.

Update: Leon Economides, who used to present the Priority Feature with Chris Prior in the good old days, commented to point out where radio rock hides these days in South Africa. It’s like the late 1960s in the States. AM only. Groovy, and all that. Thanks, Leon.