Chair, there can surely be no greater sacrifice than to put one's life on the line to protect one of our citizens. Each year in the SA Police Service's annual report, we read the names of those officers who did just that. They died doing a job they love, protecting us. They are the real heroes. What makes them real heroes is that they continued to do this job, possibly the toughest job in the world, in the face of actions by their colleagues that brought this nation great shame, such as the Marikana Massacre; Mido Macia being dragged behind a police vehicle and then beaten to death; Andries Tatane being shot to death in front of the nation's eyes on television; Anene Booysen, a gang-rape investigation gone bad; SAPS colleagues driving off, dragging a court interpreter by the neck in North West; Guptagate; the remilitarisation of the SA Police Service, SAPS, along with the shoot-to-kill mantra, leading some of their colleagues to treat protesters and even nonprotesters as the enemy.
This is, of course, just a small sample of why the SAPS had to put aside 32,8%, R20,5 billion, of its massive budget for contingent liabilities. Most of this is to pay civilians for having been shot, raped, beaten, robbed, hijacked, raped in cells, illegally detained, run over, wrongfully arrested, or to the families of those tortured or murdered. All of these actions were perpetrated by SAPS members.
There were almost 5 000 complaints against SAPS members this past year, of which 720 related to deaths at the hands of SAPS members, 88 cases of domestic violence by SAPS members and 2 320 allegations of criminal offences by SAPS members. We've seen the filmed footage of a number of these cases, as has the rest of the world, and yet the President refused my request to establish a judicial commission of inquiry into police brutality, saying it was unnecessary. I beg to differ.
It is this brutality, coupled with quite possibly the most inferior training regime in the world, that led to the results revealed by the SA Institute of Race Relations investigation that 1,7 million crimes went unreported to the police in 2011, a massive vote of no confidence in our SAPS. Particularly horrifying was the claim that three murders a day go unreported. Of the 3,3 million crimes experienced in 2011, only 48% were reported.
Indeed, as a nation, we should hang our heads in shame that only one in 10 victims of rape go to the SAPS. This means that if official statistics show 70 000 rapes reported during the annual crime statistics release circus this August, at least 700 000 women, children and men were raped. The vast majority of our SAPS members know this, and yet they still go to work each day, willing to take a bullet for you or me.
The SAPS certainly has the budget to supply our stations with the equipment they need. Of course, they should automatically have running water, toilets and electricity, and yet there are stations without some, or even all three, of these essentials. Instead the management finds what it considers to be other priorities, such as choosing to pay R4 billion to consultants. Among those, for example, R11 million was spent on adult education courses for SAPS members, despite matric being a prerequisite for joining the SAPS. This, 20 years after democracy, doesn't say much for our education system, does it?
Then there is the fact that we send our officers off to capacitate other countries, if that is indeed what they do there. Fifteen members were sent to South Sudan, with another 53 members today standing by for deployment to Darfur. The Darfur mission was started in 2005 at a cost of R12 million annually. This, while we have stations without water and our Public Service members striking yesterday, striking today and striking again next month for the increases they were promised back in 2011. Over R96 million in taxpayers' money is going instead to South Sudan and Darfur, while the SAPS pleads poverty.
Of course there are other categories of the SAPS that plead poverty, all of them preventable. Usually they may be categorised as bungles, criminality or just utter stupidity. I would put in the latter category the fact that the multimillion rand automatic vehicle location, AVL, SAPS car tracking system contract lapsed while the last, disgraced, National Police Commissioner Cele only signed the renewal three days after it expired.
The criminality relates to the seven multimillion rand contracts currently being investigated where hundreds of millions simply seem to have disappeared. The Special Investigating Unit, SIU, is still investigating the two ridiculously expensive National Police Days, so we'll have to wait and see which of the three categories they fall into.
Then there are the generic issues that see SAPS actions boosting crime, which they then have to fight. In 2010 the Minister of Police stated publicly that he really was going to be tough on SAPS members who lost their firearms - automatic dismissal. Thus far, SAPS firearms lost amount to 13 000 and dismissals zero. I did ask whether or not there were serial offenders, officers who lost a firearm annually in lieu of a 13th cheque, and they didn't know.
While general looting of SAPS coffers continues, such as in crime intelligence, there has on the other hand been a massive dropping of crime- fighting targets. This is the core mandate of the police, but as the SAPS fails to reach a target, so they drop it from 7% to 14%; it dropped from 4% to 7%; dropped to 2%; and dropped to 1%, or in some areas they said they would be content to maintain the status quo, and that for R67,9 billion.
Meanwhile they have quietly erased certain measurements that annually shamed them, such as how many officers don't have bulletproof vests or firearms. The rural safety strategy has evaporated, as has the reporting on murders and attacks on farmers and farm workers. What they don't like, they prevent us from seeing, rather like the Guptagate report before the snap debate last week.
The same is happening to our reservists, as they have been turned away from the SAPS's doors since 2008, when a bizarre moratorium on the taking on of this free labour was instituted. This, even though on 5 January 2010 this Minister answered my parliamentary question, saying the moratorium had been lifted. It hadn't and it still hasn't. So for five years the call to communities to assist in the fight against crime has seen them turned away at the door. I have no doubt this is an intentional move.
It's as intentional as retaining within the SAPS thousands of convicted criminals who committed a crime and got away with a fine, rather like here in Parliament. Even if an SAPS member has to pay a R30 000 fine for, for example, grievous bodily harm, beating someone almost to death, they don't miss a day at work or have the firearm taken from their hip. One has to ask how seriously we can take an SAPS that allows criminals to skulk in their ranks.
This has been one of the dangers of mass recruitment. In 2008, with anyone and everyone being scooped into the service and the reservists, we were left with masses of poorly trained officers, sometimes with criminal records, and of course no internal anticorruption unit. This was thanks to the disgraced National Police Commissioner before the last disgraced NPC, Jackie Selebi, who was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment on 2 July 2010, and the impact on the SAPS was cataclysmic. The shame he brought on South Africa was off the Richter scale, yet he never saw the inside of a cell. Since July last year he's been back living in his mansion, still owing us R17 million.
Meanwhile the criminal case laid by the DA against Bheki Cele as a result of the Public Protector's report on the scandalous lease deals is so far on the back burner it has gone as cold as a spent cartridge. It's all about attitude and leading from the front, and as long as recycled politicians and quasi politicians are given the job of National Police Commissioner, there is not one of our SAPS members who is going to aspire to that position. For example, despite all "the women and children first" rhetoric we hear annually, SAPS members seem universally incapable of taking domestic violence seriously. In 35% of cases they fail to arrest an abuser, and in 17% they fail to arrest them even when an arrest warrant has been issued. They simply refuse. They aren't thrown out of the SAPS either. This, while 2 500 women are murdered here each year. Indeed, our femicide rate is five times the global average.
Perhaps this is all because those at the highly paid top have been too focused on the whole grubby Mdluli saga to see what's going on in front of their eyes. He's now been sitting at home on full pay for a year, while his two colleagues are being charged with theft, fraud and corruption relating to the looting of the crime intelligence slush fund. So we sit with an acting head of crime intelligence until this matter is dealt with.
However, it's extremely embarrassing for the Police portfolio committee to grill the SAPS on this and the rest of the empty posts filled by mere acting hosts when indeed the very person who sits in as head of our committee has been in an acting position for a full year. Consider hon Van Wyk. There is no one in this room, bar myself perhaps, who knows more about the SAPS and our portfolio committee than she does. She has done an exemplary job in this position when I felt sure no one could fill the shoes of hon Chikunga.
The question is, until such time as this country becomes a mature democracy and appoints opposition members to lead all the portfolio committees, as is done in so many countries around the world, why on earth have you not appointed her? Stop dithering and get on with it. You even put her after me in the debate. [Interjections.]
This committee has work to do, such as asking why backlogs are on the increase again, despite our having spent billions on forensic laboratories. It doesn't help that the Health department labs are totally dysfunctional, making it virtually impossible to convict drunk drivers, because it takes over a year for them to process a simple vial of blood. With the DNA legislation finally coming before us on Tuesday after years of languishing before Cabinet, I did find myself wondering if we have the capacity to handle the proposed criminal DNA database.
Another red flag for South Africa is that in three years the rhino population in the Kruger National Park will enter a negative growth phase. Five years later there will be no rhinos left there at all. How did we reach this stage? I believe it's because of three years of vapid empty-suit leadership. It has sent discipline and professionalism into freefall. Crime statistics barely dropped last year and it is accepted that the SAPS presenting crime statistics is like allowing matriculants to mark their own exam papers. There seems to be an inability to understand that a lack of training is the key. A Public Service Commission report has revealed that 20% of detectives are without basic training. Only 3,3% of SAPS members are trained in sexual offences and the rest know nothing. Cases are thrown out of court and criminals remain on the streets. It is this lack of understanding of the SAPS's needs that sees us having 27 000 SAPS members with firearms, but no licences; stations with vehicles, but 16 000 cops without driver's licences; and cops too overweight and unfit to catch a cold, let alone a criminal.
The Minister continually bends over backwards to appease the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Cosatu, as seen with his firing of cleaners and security guards, with no plans for the chaos this move would cause.
Meanwhile he wastes taxpayers' time and money playing politics, such as his fight against the introduction of the Community Safety Bill in the Western Cape, or challenging the right of the Western Cape government to institute a commission of inquiry into the breakdown between community and police in Khayelitsha.
Now a word to the real police in this Chamber. You don't need the politics and gimmicks that emanate from government. You're being leaned on by politicians, while policing priorities are dictated by the news cycle rather than by what works. It's time to refocus because you already have the laws and the powers to take back our country street by street. [Applause.] All you have to do is implement what exists. You are under enormous pressure in the face of organised crime and threats to national security. You must be able to go about your job without worrying about the next edict from on high. You must be given the licence to police. How? By working with the local people; by developing local strategies; by welcoming your community policing forum, CPF, link to the public; and by understanding that communities have the right to demand the removal of station heads if they aren't up to scratch.
Citizens are expected to compare standards between schools in their area, just as patients are expected to compare the performance of local hospitals, and they should also be able to do the same with local police stations. We must give the public much more information about crime on their streets, with detailed crime maps of the crimes in their area. They must know where they are at risk. Enough with the secrecy. It's costing lives. Our citizens pay a fortune to you and to private security, and they must be able to challenge you, and your performance. If you were free to train, equip and perform as I know you can, I believe the need for private security in South Africa would simply cease. We can go on as we are. We can continue to allow inexperienced officers to be put in as leaders and expected to learn on the job; citizens living in fear; being known best for our world-class criminals and the fact that 47 of us are murdered each day. Or we could turn this page of what has been an ineffectual, excuse-ridden management. We could take back all that is good and great about the SAPS, allowing you to promote the best, to be the best you can.
I believe you want to answer to the people you signed up to serve and protect, and I believe you should be allowed to do that. Today South Africa deserves, and pays for, a highly professionalised and top-performing police service. Look in the National Development Plan. But we don't yet have one.
You have a veritable Mount Everest to climb, but there is enough that is great and good in you as the SAPS, and I believe that we will see you back up there, with these disgraces behind you, once again as a service with members our citizens run to for help, instead of run away from in fear. I salute you. [Applause.]