MEMBERS of the Public Order Policing (POP) unit only had one water cannon vehicle servicing the entire KwaZulu-Natal that they could use to disperse the crowds that were looting and burning businesses during the riots in July last year.
This revelation is contained in the 154-page report by the panel appointed by the president to investigate the government’s response to the destructive unrest across KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in July last year. The presidency released the full report on Monday.
The members of the panel were Professor Sandy Africa as chairperson, advocate Mojanku Gumbi and Silumko Sokupa.
The report said: “The numbers of POP officers are pitifully low, they are inadequately equipped and their equipment is not optimally maintained. We were informed that they have access to only one water cannon per province, they have no air capacity, and they ran out of rubber bullets.”
It also details other inefficiencies and failures in the police, dysfunction in the top structures of government and intelligence failures that occurred at the time of the riots.
The report said the high levels of poverty made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic, lack of service delivery and issue of the ANC factions all contributed to lighting the spark that led to the violence, looting and destruction.
When the riots were under way, the report found, the police, intelligence and others either failed to read the situation properly or failed to adjust their plans to contain the riots.
The report also said that it was a matter of concern that “none of the organisers or real instigators of the violence have been apprehended”.
“If there is such intelligence that has been shared by the intelligence services, the president should address any systemic weaknesses that may have caused such intelligence to escape his review. If the president has received intelligence about the instigators, the question would be: why has he not assured the nation that the government will act on this matter? Consequently, to establish trust, the president must inform the public if he is on top of the situation and what they can expect with holding any culprits responsible for the violence and looting,” the report said.
The report was welcomed by security experts as well as political parties, who said it confirmed what was already suspected.
Dr Guy Lamb, of Stellenbosch University, who works on issues relating to crime, violence, conflict, security and policing in Africa, said the report reinforced many of the issues that were in the public domain.
He said one of the things that had been suspected but had been confirmed by the report was that some people were transported from KZN to cause chaos in Gauteng.
“It’s clear there was police failure and there was failure of crime intelligence,” he said.
He said the problems at the highest level of the police between the minister and the commissioner needed urgent attention.
The report detailed the deep rift between Police Minister Bheki Cele and national police commissioner Khehla Sitole, saying the two were poles apart in their interpretation of how the events of July could have been managed.
The report is critical of the police, crime intelligence and their failure to first detect and diffuse the riots before they started or to contain them once they were under way.
It said, “Mr President, you asked us to determine whether the response by the security services was timeous, appropriate and sufficient. The answer to that, in respect of the police and the intelligence services, is an unequivocal no. Many reasons were proffered for this failure, but in the end the response remains that they failed to do the necessary to protect life, limb and property.”
It said the National Intelligence Estimate had warned that conditions were ripe for unrest and possibly violence last year, yet key government ministries and departments had not planned accordingly.
“There had been several acts of major public disorder and violence in the lead up to former president Zuma’s incarceration. There were increasingly emboldened calls for disruptions, on social media, including a call for a national shutdown. In spite of this, none of the intelligence structures of the state was able to predict or forewarn that the outbreak of looting, violence and destruction would take place,” it said.
It also found that the police were not viewed as part of the community and therefore were not trusted by residents.
The report makes several recommendations including that police should work towards rebuilding the trust of the communities.
It also said that the POP unit needed to be properly capacitated and equipped.
It recommended that a national early warning capability must be established to ensure accurate and timely intelligence is provided to the government on an ongoing basis.
Professor Nirmala Gopal, from the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s discipline of Criminology and Forensic Studies, said the report should be welcomed as a good gesture as it gave multiple actors a formal platform to have their voices heard.
“Additionally a scientific panel with clear terms of reference augurs well for our democracy.”
However, she added that the recommendations confirmed not just citizens lack of trust in security agencies but their lack of trust in the government to deliver on the Constitution.
“It is clear from the recommendations that many government departments must now come to the proverbial party by endorsing a sense of accountability. My fear regarding the recommendations is that the public will and rightfully so have expectations for a better South Africa.
“I don’t have confidence in our current government with the existing status quo to act on the recommendations. They have not addressed issues of poverty and safety and security for over two decades. Many task teams with recommendations have been generated in two decades. Yet, we have not seen effective implementation of the recommendations.”
She said the way forward was for the recommendations involving government and non-state actors to be implemented with a “clear, sincere and concerted agenda to catalyse change in South Africa”.
EFF leader Vusi Khoza said it was always clear that the riots were sparked by ANC factional battles.
“It was the Zuma camp and the Ramaphosa camp. The Zuma camp had warned that if he was sent to jail, the country would burn and that warning was not taken seriously.”
DA leader Francois Rodgers said: “We have said that these are ANC battles and that the ANC should take responsibility for what happened which destroyed lives, this all started with the gathering in Nkandla.”
Rodgers said the intelligence community had failed the country and he doubted that any recommendation made by the report to rectify the situation would be implemented.
ANC spokesperson Nhlakanipho Ntombela said they had not seen the report, while the IFP spokesperson could not be reached.
