Updated: How not to mop up criminals quickly
In a previous post I used a throwaway line about shooting a fleeing suspect in the back, as proxy for lazy, unprocedural, untrained, unconstitutional and in the end unacceptable behaviour by the police. I thought it would be obvious, but now it seems I was wrong about such behaviour being unacceptable, if I am to believe a foaming-at-the-mouth deputy minister of safety and security, Susan Shabangu.
The Pretoria News reports that she spent a good while whipping up a crowd in Pretoria West, with phrases like these:
You [police] must kill the bastards if they threaten you or the community. You must not worry about the regulations. That is my responsibility. Your responsibility is to serve and protect…
I won’t tolerate any pathetic excuses for you not being able to deal with crime. You have been given guns, now use them.
I want no warning shots. You have one shot and it must be a kill shot. If you miss, the criminals will go for the kill. They don’t miss. We can’t take this chance.
Criminals are hell-bent on undermining the law and they must now be dealt with. If criminals dare to threaten the police or the livelihood or lives of innocent men, women and children, they must be killed. End of story. There are to be no negotiations with criminals.
The constitution says criminals must be kept safe, but I say No!
Well, okay then. Right. That was exciting. It reminds a friend of mine of Sylvester Stallone: “I am the law”. It reminds me of the more expressive Al Pacino: “Hoo hah!”
First, we have corruption. Then, we have incompetence. Shabangu is right in pointing out that police are often slow to respond, reluctant to investigate and generally lackadaisical in the face of high rates of violent crime.
But is it really a good idea for a senior member of the government to stand before an angry crowd and blatantly undermine our law and constitution? Wasn’t it a serious scandal, and a major claim of human rights abuses, when apartheid-era police forces were suspected of shooting to kill first, and firing warning shots only afterwards? Doesn’t this sort of fiery rhetoric make vigilantes, kangaroo courts and lynchmobs look like the reasonable actions of concerned citizens?
She appears to labour under the misconception that the executive — the ministry in which she is the deputy — is the ultimate source of law. It would serve police officers well to grasp that this is not the case, before they take her advice and find, inexplicably, that “her responsibility” is of little use when a court decides to “worry about the regulations”.
I’ve written before about suggestions for improving policing in South Africa, noting in particular a piece by Jim Harris of the Free Market Foundation that argues despite high crime numbers, actual numbers of criminals are comparatively low, so well-motivated, well-trained forces, private if necessary, should be able to find and squash them.
Given the hamfisted and abusive record of the police, however, I’m not entirely convinced that Shabangu’s incitement is a good idea. The crowd she addressed, however, gave her a standing ovation. So now we have Keystone Kops with a licence to kill and orders to shoot on sight, with a baying, bloodthirsty crowd at their backs.
Would someone please fire the dangerously irresponsible deputy minister, before she gets someone innocent killed? With that speech alone, I suspect she’s broken so many laws, surely even the Keystone Kops can make charges of incitement or conspiracy stick.
Hoo hah, indeed.
Updated at 12:50 on 12 April 2008: It is deeply disturbing that Jacob Zuma, the president of the ruling ANC and presumptive next president of South Africa, agrees with Shabangu: “If you have a deputy minister saying the kind of things that the deputy minister was saying, this is what we need to happen.”
No wonder he’s all put out about corruption investigations, when that’s his view of the authority of the executive and the origin of law. It is true that politics is among the few careers for which no formal qualification is required (journalism being another). It is true that, “owing to his deprived childhood, Jacob Zuma did not receive any formal schooling.” I’d suggest, however, that an introductory basic course in Political Science might be in order for senior politicians. Nothing fancy, you understand. Just to get an idea of who does what in a constitutional democracy. Perhaps a special extra session on basic budgeting might be added in Zuma’s case. It may come as a surprise to our unschooled lord and master, for example, that neither his nor the deputy minister’s word is law. If she wants to change the law, she’s welcome to table a bill in the legislature, where it can be debated, examined by the Law Commission, and voted upon. In supporting her advice to the police to simply disregard laws and regulations, Zuma is gravely undermining the rule of law in this country. Not that he’s shown much regard for such quaint concepts in the first place, I guess. Now at least we know how literally he takes his campaign song: “Bring me my machine gun”.
