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Thursday, May 26, 2011
Why SA Cops are so Brutal
May 26 2011
Negligent police management, poor training, disrespect for law and order, criminal members within police ranks and blatant disregard for internal disciplinary procedures are the chief causes behind the scourge of police brutality gripping South Africa.
This was the message from renowned South African criminologists and the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) at a conference on police brutality and the use of force in Pretoria on Wednesday.
Police management failed to attend the forum because of other “commitments”.
With 2 462 criminal complaints laid against the police in the 2009/10 financial year and the organisation coming under increased pressure following the murder of service delivery protesters across South Africa, criminologists and the ICD say urgent action needs to be taken to avert the crisis.
According to the ICD, of the 2 462 complaints, 920 (40 percent) were for assault with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm, 422 (22 percent) for common assault and 325 (17 percent) for attempted murder.
Of the deaths through police action, 22 percent occurred during the commission of crimes, four percent during escapes, 10 percent during investigations, 46 percent during arrests while 2 percent of those killed were innocent bystanders.
David Bruce, senior researcher at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, said: “It is clear that police management does not know what is going on.
“There is a clear absence of understanding from police leadership on how to deal with the use of force. Management has to take responsibility if this brutality is to be stopped.”
Bruce said it seemed that the police’s solution for dealing with crime was the use of violence such as extra-judicial executions of alleged cop killers.
“The impression being created is that police leadership believes that extra-legal methods are necessary to deal with violent crime.
“This leads to serious non-fatal police violence with reports of torture and assaults on the increase, even as police murders are on the decrease,” he said.
One of the biggest causes for concern was the lack of clarity in messages from management to police members on how to fight crime, he said.
Bruce said many policemen acted with good intentions, but because of a lack of skills and experience, the use of force caused more harm exposing officers to great danger.
“What is worrying about this is that the use of force is often completely unnecessary, especially as the police involved could have dealt with the situations in another way.
“Even if police use lethal force with the intention of acting lawfully, they approach the subject with a ‘cover your a***’ attitude.
“They deal with the investigation in a way which will minimise the chance of being disciplined with the investigation being closed down as quickly as possible.”
Bruce said to solve the crisis, the SAPS had to adopt professional standards with its leadership embracing a policing approach which emphasised the protection of human rights.
“Management has to take responsibility with a task team needed to focus on creating a clear policy around the use of force.
“If they do this, there will be greater community respect for police, effective policing and a greater respect for the law,” he said.
Institute of Security Studies policing researcher, Andrew Faull, said where there were unrealistic expectations you would have members taking shortcuts.
“The crime reduction targets have developed a culture obsessed with reported crime, which has in cases seen police encouraging people not to report crimes.
“On top of this the training that is being conducted, such as human rights training, is merely a paper pushing exercise to get as many police on to the streets as quickly as possible, with focus on numbers rather than quality,” he said.
Faull said there was evidence that corruption and police brutality were on the increase.
ICD spokesman, Moses Dlamini, said there were increases in police brutality. These were influenced by factors such as increased encounters between police and suspects and service delivery protests.
http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/why-sa-cops-are-so-brutal-1.1074181
Convicted Rapist Could be Mayor
May 26 2011
ANC stands for All National Criminals
Political parties were scrambling for control of hung councils in the Western Cape on Wednesday, with the DA confirming an agreement with independents in three councils, while the ANC’s coalition with the Independent Civics Association of SA (Icosa) could bring in convicted rapist Jeffrey Donson as mayor in Kannaland when that council sits on Friday.
Last week’s local government elections provided only 17 clear majorities at local government, or municipal, level in the Western Cape, 16 going to the DA, with Beaufort West the sole ANC-controlled municipality. The battle for the remaining 13 councils is under way.
On Wednesday night, DA provincial leader Theuns Botha confirmed that the party had come to an agreement with independent councillors in Langeberg, Witzenberg and Matsikama.
Earlier on Wednesday, the ANC announced it had entered into coalitions that would give it a hand in the running of Oudtshoorn, Cape Agulhas and Kannaland.
Kannaland is one of the province’s worst-performing municipalities, burdened with a R30 million debt and charges that former officials, including Donson, had looted municipal coffers over several years.
Donson was convicted in 2008 on one count of indecent assault and seven of statutory rape, following an affair with a 15-year-old girl while he was mayor of Kannaland in 2004.
The Western Cape High Court reduced his five-year jail term to a suspended period of imprisonment, correctional supervision, a R20 000 fine and a rehabilitation programme for sex offenders.
In 2004, Donson, also known as DJ Fantastic, was forced to step down as Kannaland mayor by then Local Government MEC Marius Fransman after allegations that he had abused his mayoral fund to purchase equipment for his mobile disco.
The ANC was previously a minority partner in Kannaland, which has been plagued by allegations of corruption and maladministration, leaving the R30m debt, which Auditor-General Terrence Nombembe has refused to write off.
At the end of 2008, Donson, who had by then joined Badih Chabaan’s National People’s Party, was fired as a councillor, but he stood as an independent in a subsequent by-election and won his seat. He later rejoined Icosa.
At the end of 2009, he was again dismissed, this time by Local Government MEC Anton Bredell after a disciplinary inquiry found him guilty of interfering in the council’s administration by putting pressure on officials and misappropriating mayoral funds.
Donson and several former officials at the Kannaland municipality are subjects of a police investigation into corruption at the municipality.
Shortly after last week’s elections Botha publicly ruled out a coalition with Icosa or the Karoo Gemeenskaps Party, which is the largest party in Prince Albert but lacks enough councillors to form a majority.
Donson said local DA officials had sought to discuss an agreement soon after the elections but this had been abandoned because they didn’t have proper authority.
“We decided to go with the ANC before the elections and consulted with our supporters to look at which party would best help us achieve the goals set out in our manifesto,” said Donson in a joint media briefing with the ANC on Wednesday.
Asked about Kannaland’s financial state and its management, Donson said problems were exacerbated by the lack of infrastructure. He claimed the national government was not helping to fund infrastructure projects there.
On the issue of use of the mayoral fund, Donson said it was his prerogative to use it as he pleased and that he had not stolen any money.
“I used the mayoral fund, like any other mayor in South Africa. They (police) should come for me if they want to. I’m the people’s choice,” he said.
At Wednesday’s briefing it was also announced that in Oudtshoorn the ANC would also govern with Icosa, while independent Dirk Jantjies agreed to side with four ANC councillors in the nine-seat Cape Agulhas municipality where he said he would become deputy mayor.
Jantjies said the decision to co-operate with the ANC was not difficult since he had roots in the party.
“I come from the ANC, the ANC is a party for the poor who wants to bring them out of poverty. Even before people went to the polls, they knew where I stood,” said Jantjies.
ANC provincial treasurer Fezile Calana, announcing the deal with Icosa and Jantjies, said the party still hoped to form a coalition with the ACDP in Swellendam.
“After the elections, and after the ANC pooled its numbers … it became necessary for us to talk to various political parties,” said Calana.
He said the agreement with Icosa and Jantjies would run until the next local government elections.
“There’s been no positions promised and there’s been no exchange of money.”
While the DA was still banking on a coalition with Cope in the Bitou municipality, in Cederberg - another hung council - the ANC was hoping to conclude a deal with the Pan Africanist Congress which would give it a one-seat majority on the 11-member council where it has five councillors.
Malema Cheapens The Debate
May 25, 2011
The ANC used racism in its entire campaign, yet it blames racism for a decline in its support. ANC groups performers and non-performers by race.
Brendan Boyle: It was a good election but for one thing: the campaign for municipal power headed us away from the constructive debate about what we can do together as South Africans, and back towards the apartheid era question of whether we should do anything together at all.
It was mainly the ANC, which fought hard to create the conditions for our constitutional democracy, that campaigned recklessly in terms of black and white.
Left unchecked, this crude new language of political contestation could ignite communities frustrated by their exclusion from the visible bounty of democracy, dishearten the undeserving among its targets and needlessly polarise a society that needs to be united.
We have had Julius Malema, standing at President Jacob Zuma's side, branding the entire white population criminal and absurdly alleging some secret agenda on the part of whites and the Democratic Alliance to reinstate apartheid.
Nceba Faku, mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, urged supporters to burn down the building of black editor Heather Robertson's local newspaper, The Herald, because, he said, it had propagated the cause of the Democratic Alliance.
"Down with white political parties, down! Down with those who vote for white political parties," he said.
Malema's rhetoric cheapened what should have been a debate about the issues of municipal governance, such as the ratio of cross-subsidisation from rich to poor, the use of accessible land in wealthy areas to house the poor and the priorities of road building and public transport facilities.
Talking about Helen Zille, the leader of the opposition, as "the madam", with clear connotations of racial domination, and her party's spokeswoman, Lindiwe Mazibuko, as her "tea girl" was a dangerous resort to the racial stereotyping that underpinned white rule in a society still maimed by the crimes of apartheid.
No doubt feeling himself protected by the curious notion that black people are incapable of racism, the word "racist" rolled off his tongue as easily as "vote ANC". Zuma and the other party leaders usually sharing the stage sought neither to contradict nor to stop him. Clearly, they agreed we should go back to a political contest based on the evil intentions of one race group towards another.
For those who never subscribed to the underlying theory of apartheid and those who have genuinely been converted to nonracialism, the charge of racism probably is the most hurtful insult to endure. It is a charge that surely should be a last resort to explain fault lines in personal relationships, in the workplace and on the national stage.
Yet for the ANC, which came so ill-prepared to the local government election campaign, it was virtually the first weapon it took from the vast arsenal at its disposal to counter an opposition campaign that had been at least a year in the making.
Then, when the results were in, with their small but significant losses for the ANC and a 50% increase in the DA's share of the vote, racism was one of the explanations the ANC used to console itself.
Jackson Mthembu, the ANC's national spokesman, called in an interview with the Sunday Times for a probe into white attitudes and why coloured supporters had deserted the party.
"People who were our traditional supporters may not have suddenly become racist," he conceded, but the comment implied that racism was the first explanation that came to his mind to explain the party's losses.
Of course, there are still many whites who are racist and do hold such views and some of them will have voted against the ANC. But on the whole they are a dying breed of people too old or isolated to have discovered the bankruptcy of their prejudice in the successfully deracialised school, work and leisure communities that are this country's hope.
"You still have sections of the South African population that think being black means you can't govern," Mthembu told the Sunday Times.
"That sentiment is being galvanised through some people saying that where white people are governing, they are governing better."
A more likely explanation for the shrinking ANC support is disappointment at the party's performance so far, at its failure to halt the rampant self-enrichment of the new elite and at the consequences for the efficient management of local authorities, healthcare and education of the jobs-for-pals culture known as cadre deployment - all of which can be addressed.
It is the ANC that chooses to group performers and non-performers by race. Out here, in the real world, we know good and bad service are not defined by race, but by good and bad attitude and no one ethnic group has a monopoly on either.
COPE implodes
May 25, 2011
Dexter fires first shots in leadership battle
COPE communications chief Phillip Dexter has proposed in a confidential document circulated among party leaders that the Congress of the People should relaunch itself or disband.
Just days after the local government elections, Dexter, who is seen as a close ally of COPE president Mosiuoa Lekota, says the party has failed to live up to its promise to be an alternative to the ANC and has in fact degenerated into "a culture that mimicked the worst found in the ANC".
In a 19-page draft report titled "COPEing with the Crisis in the Congress of the People: Our Responsibility in the National Democratic Revolution", Dexter alleges that party election lists were manipulated in 2009 and 2011.
"Currently, there are mayoral and councillor candidates who are not only inappropriate, but no member of the party can tell anyone how they were selected and by who. It is as if they fell from the sky," writes Dexter.
COPE funds were not only abused in parliament, allegedly by the party's former deputy president, Mbhazima Shilowa, but also by COPE provincial leaders and in the Lekota-controlled party headquarters.
"Funds in the party are not managed well and are routinely abused and while those excesses in Parliament were investigated and followed up in one instance, little to nothing has ever been done about the abuse of funds at provincial level and in the party HQ. There is little to no accountability for funds managed at a national level in the party itself."
COPE is also plagued by cliques that "mobilise people along racial lines", Dexter writes.
"COPE has its own 'Aurora's' [a reference to the unpaid staff of the Aurora mine] where staff are not paid yet those in political offices have their expenses paid, stay in expensive hotels and generally use resources as if they are their own personal ones."
COPE drew only 2.33% of the vote in last week's election and now it faces the "impossible choice" of deciding whether to go into a coalition with the DA or ANC in hung municipal councils.
Dexter warns, however, that the DA "reinforces the patterns of under-development inherited from the apartheid era".
But a COPE insider said COPE's coalition with the DA in several municipalities was already a "fait accompli". Party sources said COPE leaders had flown to Cape Town today for meetings with Helen Zille.
Although Dexter does not call for Lekota's head in his discussion paper, the same source said the paper was the "first shot fired in the leadership contest between Dexter and Lekota".
Lekota yesterday said he did not see Dexter's discussion document as an indication that Dexter wanted to be party president, but added that nobody in COPE would be prevented from contesting elections.
He refused to comment on Dexter's allegations that party lists were drawn up fraudulently, and that COPE headquarters had also "abused" funds.
Boer Farmer Bill Voller
Black killer of Boer farmer Bill Voller thought he was rich because he helped black people...
by Censorbugbear Reports on Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 10:08am
VOLLER, BILL, TZANEEN MURDER - handwritten letter by Voller’s murderer Freddy Baloyi, describing the exact organisational procedure followed by farm-attack ‘militia gangs’ in the Nov 30 1999 murder of farmer Bill Voller on his farm outside Tzaneen: According to Solidarity Radio, Bill Voller, 61, a mango farmer of the farm Dindinnie near Ofcolaco, 60km from Tzaneen, was both stabbed and shot dead on the night of November 30 1999. His wife Vera (58), was attacked and tied up. http://www.solidariteitradio.co.za/wp-content/uploads/volledige-lys-van-plaasaanvallex.pdf
letter from convicted killer Freddy Baloyi, written from prison, was addressed to Lita Fourie of the charity Tabita, which assists traumatised victims of farm attacks: tabita12@ovi.com, http://facebook.com/lita.fourie
Fascinating insight into psychology of black-African males:
I post this letter because I think it provides a fascinating insight into the psychology of the black-African male. Westerners often aren't aware of such beliefs. We genuinely believe that by helping poor people uplift themselves we help their communities thrive - and that's also to our mutual advantage of course: happy neighbours give safer environments for everybody.
Helping your neighbours
It's the basis of altruistic behaviour: helping unhappy neighbours thrive, also makes your own communities safer. Apparently not in the case of poor Mr Voller. He negotiated a deal with the local municipality and with public sponsors to get water-reticulation pipes laid on to two townships in Tzaneen in 1999: these killers therefor believed that he must have had at least 'R5million to R10million..' that he must be a very rich man.' As it turned out, Mr Voller had no money in his homestead. He did have a large supply of legal guns which were robbed: and the gang then didn't know what to do with: back then with a more alert police force, they couldn't flog them as easily as they can today. So in the end, Mr Baloyi apparently turned State's evidence in exchange for the R50,000 reward offered by the police, from the information I can gather.
Page 1: On the 28th November 1999, I, Freddy Baloyi, was at my work-place at Germiston, the name of the company that I was working for is May-Day Towing, lower Main Reef Road Number 56. Then came Ishamael Mushwana and his younger brother Vincent Mushwana. When they arrived, after exchanging greetings Ishmael introduced Vincent to me and told that he was his younger brother and was coming from Tzaneen.
He’s a tsotsi, he’s rich: he’s been breaking into the Boers’ houses…
‘He’s a tsotsi (a criminal) as you can see how he’s wearing. Even though you are working you cannot work like him. It is long he’s been breaking into the Boers houses, hence you see he’s expensively dressed'. I then nodded with my head. Then from there, Vincent started talking on his own saying there’s a very rich white man near where h’s staying therefore there was a job.
This white man has millions of Rands: he is very rich as you can see for yourself: he made it possible for local villages to get tap water…
‘He further said that white man might be having about R10million Rands and not less than R5million Rands. So you Freddy must come with us to rob him so that you can be able to drive your own BMW vehicle just like Ismael. He further said that since I was a Security Guard I am able to use a gun I started asking some questions from Ishmael about whether he knows this rich white man and he confirmed knowing him and that he was very rich. This was further confirmed by the fact that he’d made it possible for the local villagers to get tap water referring to Hallicy (sp?) and Hovheni villages… If we can just go there you can see with your own eyes…’
--------------------------
source:
VOLLER, BILL, TZANEEN MURDER SUNDAY - 28 NOVEMBER 1999: handwritten letter by Voller’s murderer Mkhachani Freddy Baloyi, (ID: PDS No 99103187) describing the exact organisational procedure which was followed by their farm-attack ‘militia gang’ in the murder of farmer Bill Voller on his farm outside Tzaneen: letter addressed from prison to Lita Fourie of the charity Tabita, which helps traumatised and disabled victims of farm attacks: tabita12@ovi.com, http://facebook.com/lita.fourie tel +27 725427352 Mobile, Address Yamorna 29, 0850 Tzaneen, South Africa, Email tabita12@ovi.com, http://facebook.com/lita.fourie
Black African psychology: killer Freddy Baloyi, describing murdering Boer farmer Bill Voller Dec 1999 Tzaneen
Black African psychology: killer Freddy Baloyi, describing murdering Boer farmer Bill Voller Dec 1999 Tzaneen
Black African psychology: killer Freddy Baloyi, describing murdering Boer farmer Bill Voller Dec 1999 Tzaneen
Black african psychology: killer Freddy Baloyi, describing murdering Boer farmer Bill Voller Dec 1999 Tzaneen
Black African psychology: killer Freddy Baloyi, describing murdering Boer farmer Bill Voller Dec 1999 Tzaneen
Black African psychology: killer Freddy Baloyi, describing murdering Boer farmer Bill Voller Dec 1999 Tzaneen
Fascinating insight into the psychology of black-African males:
I posted this letter for people to read - because I think it provides a fascinating insight into the psychology of the black-African male. Westerners often aren't aware of such beliefs. We genuinely believe that by helping poor people uplift themselves we help their communities thrive - and that's also to our mutual advantage of course: happy neighbours give safer environments for everybody. It's the basis of altruistic behaviour: helping unhappy neighbours thrive, also makes your own communities safer. Apparently not in the case of poor Mr Voller. He negotiated a deal with the local municipality and with public sponsors to get water-reticulation pipes laid on to two townships in Tzaneen in 1999: these killers therefor believed that he must have had at least 'R5million to R10million..' that he must be a very rich man.'
Mr Voller had no money at his homestead...
As it turned out, Mr Voller had no money in his homestead. He did have a large supply of legal guns which were robbed: and the gang then didn't know what to do with: back then with a more alert police force, they couldn't flog them as easily as they can today. So in the end, Mr Baloyi apparently turned State's evidence in exchange for the R50,000 reward offered by the police, from the information I can gather.