COPE urges police to ignore illegal shoot-to-kill orders

Date: 2014-01-31

The first meeting of the national office-bearers of the Congress of the People in Kempton Park today was interrupted, with the news of yet another killing of a South African citizen by the South African Police Service.

Section 11 of the Constitution does not allow for the indiscriminate killing of people. This is the same section of the Constitution that rendered the death penalty illegal.

Section 200 of the Constitution says, further, that there shall be a defence force, and section 205 says there shall be a police service.

A service and a force are trained differently, as can easily be divined from the terms themselves.

When President Jacob Zuma told South Africa from the Jabulani Amphitheatre in March 2010 that he is now changing the police service into a police force, where did he get that authority? Did Parliament give him the?authority to change the Constitution?

In October 2009, then-Deputy Police Minister Fikile Mbalula told the country that he is now going to train the police to be a paramilitary force. Former police commissioner Bheki Cele is on record, telling his officers to shoot to kill and worry about the consequences later. Susan Shabangu, another former Deputy Minister of Safety and Security, said in 2008 that officers "must kill the bastards" and not worry about police regulations.

How many South Africans have lost their lives in their quest for a better life, since Zuma's Jabulani Amphitheatre announcement?

Today, the national office-bearers of COPE mandated President Mosiuoa Lekota, Deputy President Willy Madisha and National Chairperson Pakes Dikgetsi to arrange an immediate meeting with Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa and the National Commissioner of Police, Riah Phiyega.

The Congress of the People is of the opinion that these two individuals are not suitable at all to continue heading our police service. Phiyega has been a disaster since day 1 of her tenure in June 2012.

We are further calling on the immediate suspension of the command structures responsible for the killing of four people at Madibeng last week, and for the killing in Main Reef Road, Johannesburg today, particularly now that information has surfaced that some of the police killers involved in the 2012 Marikana massacre might also have been involved in the Madibeng killings.

Despite contravening the Constitution and training the police as a paramilitary force, both Cwele and Phiyega as well as their political heads, Mthethwa, Shabangu and Mbalula, have failed to train SAPS members properly as many South Africans continue to lose their lives at the hands of ill-trained police officers.

Rights organisation Human Rights Watch says it remains concerned about police brutality in South Africa, as well attacks on the free media. This is the second consecutive year that state security violence against civilians during protests has given the country a bad name on the organisation's State of Human Rights global report.

Human Rights Watch says Nelson Mandela left a very strong human rights legacy, but the Southern African director of the group's Africa division, Tiseke Kasamba, says this legacy is under threat.

In light of the above, it is now crystal clear that the real killers here are the ANC government. The executive of President Zuma must directly take the blame for these killings, as the shoot-to-kill policy was their brainchild.

The Congress of the People today calls on all officers of the law to immediately cease carrying out illegal commands by their superiors to kill people.

"Will you go and steal that money if your commander tells you to go and steal it? Of course you will not, so why carry out another illegal order to shoot people if your commander tells you to do so?" asks Lekota.

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