SAPS crisis runs deeper than one corruption scandal

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JEREMY MAGGS: President Ramaphosa has suspended the National Police Commissioner, Fannie Masemola, after he was charged in a corruption linked SAPS (South African Police Service) procurement case. Lieutenant-General Puleng Dimpane, the police finance boss now steps in as acting commissioner. But I think this is bigger than just one contract. It raises serious questions about SAPS leadership, corruption, procurement controls and whether organised crime has reached too far into the state.

I want to discuss that with Dr Guy Lamb from the National Planning Commission. He is also a respected criminologist in South Africa. Guy, a very warm welcome. Is this just a procurement scandal or a full-blown policing crisis?

GUY LAMB: Well, we’ve had a full-blown policing crisis for many, many years, there are various aspects of it. What certainly happened with the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry and then further elaborated on in the ad hoc process that parliament has been pursuing, is that there is a problem around – we’ve always known there’s been a problem of corruption – but really around the deep infiltration on the part of organised crime. Because we knew organised crime was having an impact at the station level, we’d see dockets disappearing or witnesses being intimidated or bribes being paid, for example, for investigators or detectives to undermine court dockets or not include enough evidence or not do sufficient investigations so that the case never gets to court.

But certainly, what Madlanga has exposed is deep rot at the top and the situation of where many aspects of the procurement process have been captured.

So of course, this is not the first time it’s happened. We’ve had a series of other incidences involving the police. It’s important because the SAPS are one of the biggest government agencies. They span more than 1100 policing stations and precincts throughout South Africa, and they have a massive procurement budget. So of course, it’s a bit of a major retraction to organised criminal groups.

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So it is important that we get a handle on that procurement because if it is corrupted, it has a dramatic impact on the rest of the police. I think we really do need to start with that, and then we can fix other things afterwards. Because by dealing with and fixing procurement, it’s internal, this has to do with internal processes.

It has to do with monitoring how money is spent, how contracts are administered, where the day-to-day policing is a lot more complicated. Really, what we need to do here is rebuild trust in the police. We can do this in one way, certainly by getting on top of the finances.

JEREMY MAGGS: I guess we’ve got to ask the question, and you’ve partly answered it because it involves oversight, but why SAPS procurement is so repeatedly vulnerable to corruption.

GUY LAMB: It’s vulnerable to corruption, I think, in a number of ways. Number one, it’s vulnerable because it is massive. it’s one of the biggest procurement budgets in government departments. The police have large budgets to deal with a variety of things. But also, the problem with it is there’s a lack of external oversight, in other government departments you’d have the auditor general, for example, playing a lot more of a direct role in monitoring what’s going on.

But with the police, there’s this insular type of culture, and this is what happens throughout the world, and they generally resist external oversight.

In these kinds of circumstances where it’s more murky, a lack of transparency, we do tend to see corruption flourishing. So you’ve got this combination of a massive budget, really attractive to organised criminal groups, but then you’ve got these internal processes that lack transparency, and the internal processes are also really complicated. So you need to be able to corrupt individuals within the police in order to be able to access those resources.

JEREMY MAGGS: And that resistance culture to external oversight is going to be very difficult to change.

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GUY LAMB: It is going to be very difficult to change. But the important thing is around needing institutions to be brought in. The police have resisted this. These institutions should have been established years and years ago, certainly in the National Development Plan. As I said, as a commissioner on the National Planning Commission, one of the issues around police professionalism is greater oversight to have advisory boards that have much closer monitoring of police operations and activities in the day-to-day work of the police, because parliament provides some oversight, but it’s not good enough because most of the members of parliament are not experts on policing.

We do have IPID (Independent Police Investigative Directorate) but they are overstretched.

Where we do need much more fundamental oversight, and that’s certainly what the National Development Plan talks about, (is) holding the police to account not only for how they police, but also in terms of how they spend their money.

JEREMY MAGGS: So where do you start implementing that, do you think?

GUY LAMB: Well, we need some leadership change and that’s happening. But of course, we don’t know if this is going to be temporary or what’s going to be a longer-term solution. But certainly, in terms of the law and the process unfolding, we do have to wait and be patient on this, unfortunately.

Now it’s about looking at the South African Police Service Act, making the necessary reforms in the police act to bring in the oversight that looks at the police themselves. So not only in terms of how they spend their money, how they police, but also around internal discipline, because that’s a major challenge. As you know, police do things, break the law, and often just get away with the slap on the wrist. So the opportunities are there for reforming the legislation, but also, about bringing in these institutions which are set out and laid out in national policy.

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JEREMY MAGGS: Conventional wisdom suggests that Puleng Dimpane is a safe pair of hands, but it’s going to be difficult to operate within that system that you’ve outlined to us.

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GUY LAMB: It is very difficult. It is a massive organisation. You’re dealing with more than 100 000 employees, you’re dealing with a large management team, some are effective, some aren’t, some will listen to instructions, some won’t. We know that an authoritarian or dictatorial kind of management style doesn’t work. it leads to dysfunction.

We don’t know anything about, Lieutenant General Dimpane’s management style but if she’s able to motivate people, mobilise people towards change, then we can see a lot happening. Certainly, the opportunity is there for her to take action. But it is an incredibly difficult organisation to run and there are multiple vested interests within it, and there are still many corrupt elements in it, so she’s got her job cut out for her.

JEREMY MAGGS: She did reportedly warn about irregular expenditure in the past, and it’s distressing, we should know why those warnings weren’t enough.

GUY LAMB: Yeah, they weren’t enough. She (made) a warning from the perspective that she had, and she didn’t obviously have power to bring about reforms. She has identified that there were problems, there are challenges, there are dangers and hazards. But I think now is the opportunity to look at what reforms need to happen.

Is the system too complicated that it creates corruption? What are the weak points that need to be addressed? And how can we bring in a system that prevents or reduces the likelihood of corruption, but also allows the police to do their job effectively? Because we don’t want to be in a situation where it’s so difficult for the police to spend money that they can’t do their job. But we also want to make sure that that money is not going into criminal hands.

JEREMY MAGGS: Dr Guy Lamb, thank you very much indeed.

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