Once upon a time, when I was in OR Tambo International airport, I met the honourable gentleman called Judge Farlam, and that was before the finishing of the report. I invited myself to the Commission because unfortunately I was never invited. My name has been mentioned time and again in the Commission when I was a national Commissioner of the SA Police, SAP. So, I asked the Judge to invite me because my name has been mentioned in the Commission.
One major problem of the case raised was a question of Cele militarising the police and not professionalising them. It would
have been nice to get a platform from that Commission to explain these two things: What is a militarisation of the police? I really don't know. I have seen the curriculum of the SA Police. On the curriculum of the SA Police, one of the emphases is that policing is done under the new dispensation and under human rights.
This was not done when we were policed. Maybe you were never policed; I was policed. That time in policing, the big war was to fight those that were fighting for human rights. Now, the present situation is that you must know human rights section whatever of the Constitution; what the Constitution is saying and spending a lot of time in training, to understand that we are under human rights and under the Constitution that need to be respected and be protected.
If you go to section 205 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, it instructs police on what to do: To make sure that they protect the South African citizens and all the people that are in South Africa and enforces the law. So, if you teach those things, I do not know what militarisation is. Maybe it's because there were different ranks in police service.
Those ranks don't make you not to start your curriculum. You need to know it in order for you to know what you are supposed to do. So, I
wanted to explain that militarisation is nothing that is not happening at all. Actually, the police have been demilitarised and we are continuing to do that. Concerning professionalisation, I don't know when they are professional and if now they are not professional.
South African Police, by the way, is one of the highly regulated and trained groups of people in the Republic of South Africa. I agree that like all other training, they must have their categories. As we speak, we have categories that are called the special task force, the national intervention unit, the tactical response team, the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences, FCS, the Combat Action Teams, CATS, and everybody who is trained on different levels for the relevant jobs.
We sent the SA Police highly trained to train with the French Special Units and we were Number 4 in the world. [Applause.] That unit was led by Lieutenant General Mkhwanazi who has been the Acting Provincial Commissioner in KwaZulu-Natal. We have now sent him back to national to run the special forces of the SA Police, to professionalise it the way himself is a professional on this matter.
So, we are running a professional organisation here. Like all other organisations, you will have wrong people. For instance, there are doctors who cut a left leg instead of a right leg. [Laughter.] You will not tell me that those doctors are not professionals. They are professionals. Instead of cutting the right leg, they cut the left leg. In some instances, in the process of performing that procedure, they leave the pair of scissors inside the patient as they knit the patient up.
So, the question is: Are doctors not professionals? They are. But like in the police service, there will be those police that are not doing their job properly. The Minister of Justice and Correctional Services was here and somebody asked the question on - what is it? - Remission. You know why? It is because the prisons are 37% overpopulated.
Also, not a single prisoner has marched to prison and toy-toyed to be arrested. The prisoners are all sent to prison by the SA Police. [Laughter.] I mean all of them. Amongst them there are also lifers. People complain about lifers and long sentences. The perpetrators get life sentences if their cases have been properly investigated.
We have thousands of lifers already now, and it is all because the SA Police are professionals in doing their job. Bravo to the SA Police. Thank you. [Applause.]
Question 2: