Madam Deputy Speaker, the DA has watched with great interest the Ministry's publicity campaign in relation to section 49 and the National Police Commissioners' announcement that this section would be changed to give police more firepower.
It is already crystal clear in that section that the SAPS may not shoot unarmed citizens, and citizens who are fleeing, in the back. So, the conclusion is that our Minister wanted to go back to apartheid-era policing. Now, as a result of this shoot-to-kill puffery, citizens have died. Even a little three-year-old, whom the police officer thought had held a gun, has died. Now the Minister makes a 180 degree turn, saying there are just one or two technical changes he wants to make. This would suggest that a full bench of judges somehow got it wrong when this legislation was moved away from the apartheid-era format.
Now one wonders if one is disagreeing with the statements made by the National Police Commissioner, or perhaps realising that the statements made by the then Deputy Minister, Susan Shabangu, who said, "Shoot and kill the bastards and don't worry about the regulations", might have encouraged SAPS members to become law breakers. And I want to know what right the Minister had to run such a publicity campaign; one that has caused so many police offices to become confused about what previously was crystal clear regarding their rights to "shoot and kill" ... [Time expired.]