Now why would anyone want to think South Africa is in deep crisis? If yesterday’s open letter to Jacob Zuma by Alec Hogg wasn’t enough to convince you, how about a deadly shootout between opposing police forces?

It appears there is now open warfare between the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD). The former is the national police, run by fat-cat gangsters. The latter are a bunch of glorified traffic cops, most related to each other, who spend their days getting fat, extorting bribes, and beating up girls in bars.

Writes the Sowetan’s Mfundekelwa Mkhulisi:

Members of the South African Police Services (SAPS) fired rubber bullets during a stand-off with their Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) counterparts on the M2 Highway in Johannesburg last night.

“Metro police blocked the flow of traffic on the M2 and when police intervened they fired live ammunition and police returned with rubber bullets,” police spokesman Julia Claassen said.

The entire city centre came to a grinding halt, as bystanders fled for their lives and hid under their cars. The Times reports that a police spokeman couldn’t get to the scene, and couldn’t get a report on the gun-battle because police officers had switched off their cellphones. Its coverage, by Werner Swart and Thabo Mkhize, also says one cop may have died in the stand-off:

Protesting Metro police caused chaos yesterday when they sealed-off the Johannesburg CBD, preventing thousands of motorists from leaving the city centre and sparking a deadly clash with the South African Police Service.

The violence may have resulted in the death of one metro officer, but the SAPS were unable to confirm this last night. Seven metro officers were injured.

The clash came after hundreds of metro policemen, in full uniform, blocked access to highway on-ramps and off-ramps ringing the city last night, in protest over a salary dispute with their employer.

SAPS officers fired rubber bullets to disperse their unruly metro colleagues, said spokesman Supertintendent Eugene Opperman.

He said the metro officers returned fire with live ammunition. The police are now investigating cases of attempted murder against the metro police officers.

Terrified motorists told The Times how officers had threatened motorists and brought traffic to a standstill. At some intersections, officers used concrete bins to block the path of motorists trying to make their way home.

Here’s the Mail & Guardian Online’s take on the story:

Protesting metro police officers fired live ammunition at South African Police Service (SAPS) members in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

SAPS Gauteng police spokesperson Superintendent Eugene Opperman said the police had been forced to fire rubber bullets at metro police members who had blockaded the city, causing traffic gridlock.

Seven metro police officers — three women and four men — were injured during the police action, Opperman said.

The exchange occurred in the Eloff Street/M2 highway area.

The protests were triggered by complaints over salaries and nepotism. Strikers said they would not return to work until their grievances had been addressed.

Major roads and highways were blocked, causing traffic havoc.

Said Opperman: “The SAPS deplores the conflict-seeking type of protest by the Johannesburg metro police.

Come foreigners! Come football fans! Welcome to our fair land, and bring your euros with you! (Dollars can be exchanged for real currency or a flack jacket upon arrival at OR Tambo International Airport. Even Metro cops won’t accept dollars for bribes.)

If I were an honest cop in that department, I would resign in disgust, today, and publicly announce this fact. Anyone who doesn’t, deserves the stigma of being a Johannesburg Metropolitan Pig Thug.

More than that, this appalling behaviour calls for the immediate disbandment of the Metropolitan Police. Arrest anyone who took part in the protest, and lock them up. Make sure they never work in a position of responsibility again, lest innocent companies (such as private security firms) accidentally hire disgruntled homicidal maniacs.

The concept of a Metro police force is a good one. A national force isn’t very good at local policing, traffic management and by-law enforcement. After all, they have police commissioners to catch. But when local police start shooting at national police, something appears to be somewhat wrong. I don’t mean to whinge, you understand, or sound pessimistic, but perhaps someone over at SA Rocks can explain how else one should feel about this sort of thing, or exactly what we should do about it. Other than grin, bear it, and send Nelson Mandela birthday wishes.

I’ve sent him a wish. It read, “Sorry, Madiba, that you had to live to see this.”

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”.

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?

The Free Market Foundation’s Jim Harris did some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and found some interesting statistics:

Anthony Minnaar, a crime researcher at Unisa, has conducted a … survey. He finds that house robbers have committed on average between 80 and 105 crimes before being caught and convicted. And captured heist gang members have been involved in between 30 and 40 heists, of which there are between 300 and 400 a year. So there are probably between 20 000 and 30 000 criminals in South Africa involved in most of the crimes. That happy notion implies that the remaining roughly 48 million of us are not criminal. Not yet, anyway. It hardly seems impossible for a determined and focused police force to capture 20 000 – 30 000 criminals within a year or so of single-minded investigation. Thereafter, presumably some low-level mopping-up effort would keep the authorities on top of opportunists rushing in to refill those emptied job-opportunity niches.

That does indeed sound manageable, though it raises the rather depressing question of how on earth South Africa’s criminals manage to clean out 100 houses before getting caught.

More interesting, though, is Harris’s stab at a solution:

The market-like trick would be to incentivise the police with variable wages dependent on captures, convictions and crime levels. Better still, outsource the task and its rewards to the private sector for quicker and more effective profit-driven action.

In principle, I’m okay with the notion of incentive pay (especially if it counters the allure of bribery). I’m also okay with the notion of a private police force. There’s no reason why such a force can’t be subject to the law, including special laws designed to apply only to them. There’s every reason to believe such a force, if subject to free-market competition, can be more efficient and effective than a public monopoly. Besides, it’s not like the notion of private armed security is foreign to South Africans. They’d have no market for their services if the public police force were sufficiently effective.

I do, however, have some questions on the subject, on which free-market philosophers may be able to enlighten me.

First, if a pay incentive is offered for captures and convictions — whether to private or public police officers — does this not create a perverse incentive to invade privacy, plant evidence, beat up the guilty, harrass the innocent, and otherwise abuse the extraordinary rights a police officer has over individual liberty? How could such an unintended consequence be neutralised?

Second, if a private police force is established, how does one minimise the problem — already common in our public police forces — of focusing largely on cash-generating activities like enforcing minor traffic infringements on perfectly safe roads?

Third, if bribery and corruption are rife in our current public police force, what guarantee — other than trusting in the self-interest of shareholders — is there that the problem will be less severe in the case of a private police force?

As I said, in principle I like the idea. It’s not like our current police force is very effective, or immune to the lure of easy money, either of which would make a good case for retaining the status quo. However, one would have to not only prevent abuse of a police force’s extraordinary powers, but sufficiently reassure those who are instinctively skeptical of private firms and free markets. A legislative framework that achieves these goals will have to be fleshed out considerably if the concept of a private (or private-like) police force is to get any traction.

I share Junior’s sentiments over at Ibhubezi: “Quite honestly I am getting tired of the Selebi saga now.”

It’s surprising to see the date on which the impending arrest of Jackie Selebi, South Africa’s police commissioner and chairman of Interpol, on charges of corruption and worse, was first mooted. It was more than three months ago. Days later, troubling signs of presidential interference designed to protect Selebi began to surface.

As his arrest neared, the chief of the investigation in the case was dramatically arrested, but all charges were later dropped, prompting renewed fears of political interference to protect Selebi, whether by agents in the turf war between the regular police and the special investigations force (the Scorpions), by intelligence agents who appear to have little to do other than serve as political attack dogs in this country, or by the president himself.

Selebi has now finally stepped down, and has resigned (to use the official term) as chairman of Interpol, while the prosecution appears set to go ahead.

Ibhubezi continues:

Quite honestly I am getting tired of the Selebi saga now. Every-time one opens a newspaper you find something new that the man is alleged to have done.

We now know that he has been granted extended leave from his position as head of police and he has quit Interpol. A question that jumps to my mind is why this man was not fired? Jacob Zuma was sacked as Deputy President before he was found guilty of anything, in fact he has still not been found guilty of anything.

Jackie Selebi faces charges of corruption, fraud, racketeering and defeating the course of justice.

I know one is presumed innocent until a court finds you guilty, but for a man in Selebi’s position, this is a disgrace. When he was appointed to head Interpol it was a massive honour for the country as a whole. That honour has now turned into a disgrace.

One cannot help wondering if political appointments in such high positions within the SAPS is the way to go. Whatever happened to working yourself up from constable to Commissioner. This country needs a real cop heading up the police services.

The crime situation is getting worse, the cops are leaderless, the criminals are the only ones laughing.

Quite so. Selebi should have done the right thing months ago: request leave from the president to stand aside, and ask him to institute an investigation to promptly clear up a matter that taints the commissioner, the police and the reputation of the country. That he hasn’t done so suggests that such an investigation would have found at least some of the allegations against him to be painfully true.

That’s the impression you’d get if you read this BBC report. It says that a teenager in the UK has been arrested under the Terrorism Act for, wait for it, possessing a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook. According to the story, this appears to be sufficient to warrant charges of “possession of material for terrorist purposes” and “the collection or possession of information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism”.

Outrage!

“In the UK, possession of the Anarchist’s Cookbook is terrorism,” screams a Slashdotter under the subtle pseudonym Anonymous Terrorist, linking to the BBC piece. The item is tagged with the terms “censorship”, “court”, “politics”, “policestate”, and “fahrenheit451″, which itself constitutes an eloquent editorial.

Of course, only the Jihadis’ useful idiots in the West would believe this. Some of us might think there is something more to the story, given the curious fact that the Anarchist Cookbook is freely available for download online, and Amazon.com unabashedly sells paperback copies for less than $20.

So you go in search of a less biased report, from a rather more competent and less biased organisation than the BBC. Say, the Yorkshire Post.

According to this version, the teenager in question had half a kilo of potassium nitrate under his bed. This is saltpetre, a perfectly legal chemical, useful for curing meat and a number of things other than as an ingredient in explosives. Besides, who hasn’t made firework mischief as a kid with science lab chemicals?”

Fair enough. But there’s more. Like a quarter-kilo of calcium chloride they also found. This is another legal chemical used in refrigeration plants and for road de-icing, but also an ingredient in explosives recipes in the Anarchist Cookbook. And more still: the boy had videos of terrorist attacks and beheadings. Innocent entertainment, no doubt. References to “jihad” were found at the address. Who doesn’t?

The boy had recently travelled to Pakistan. “Oh, so he’s brown-skinned! Racists,” the useful idiots cry.

It is true that all of these things might, on their own,  be perfectly legal. Combined, however, they’re mighty suspicious. They’re a fairly strong indication that our boy might not be quite as innocent as the sympathetic BBC story makes him appear. Nevermind whatever details the police chose not to disclose, in order not to jeopardise a potential prosecution.

I’m fairly sure the police didn’t get up one day deciding to make a nuisance of themselves by wasting their time arresting someone just because he’s brownskinned (an assumption that isn’t supported by any information in the media), or to make him a scapegoat. Nor would they bother charging him if they didn’t think there’d be a reasonable chance of a conviction.

It always amazes me: when police don’t stop an attack before it happens and evidence such as this emerges, they are derided as incompetent buffoons who had the evidence right under their noses but couldn’t connect dots a toddler could connect. And when they do, they’re accused of being racist pigs who arrested some innocent rube before they even committed a crime. Can’t win, eh?