Speaker, I'm not certain about the last part, whether they are police officers who are not trained who are holding positions and are in charge of others. Oh! The commissioner, is that what you are referring to?
The commissioner does not deal with operations. She has a range of well- trained policemen and policewomen under the commission; those who know exactly what to do. She doesn't command people for operations. Her job is not to be an operational person in the police force. You will agree, and I know what has happened in the recent past, and we have all condemned it. But I don't think we can also say that it is a daily occurrence - it's not. There are cases that have happened and we can count them. There are too many crowds that have come that were well controlled by the South African police. Whether demonstrations or strikes, they have been controlling them. There are few incidents that we can count. I don't think that that suggests that there is terrible crowd control. I think that statement cannot be accurate. We can focus on the specific incidents and deal with them.
If you talk about a number of police there is one case that we cannot discuss because it is under the commission - the Marikana commission. Well- trained police were there. The question we are trying to find out is what happened. That's what the commission is going to tell us and I'm sure that the police who are there will give their side of the story, as is always the case. It's not because generally the police force doesn't have the capacity and the skills to control crowd. They control them almost on a continuous basis. However, it does not mean that we should not deepen the training. We should, and I think that is agreed so that even those isolated incidents which are bad should not happen. I think we agreed to that one.
But I just think if we put the situation as if generally police here are untrained and they don't know how to control crowds, I don't think that will be telling the truth. There are huge crowds in South Africa, very vibrant ones which the police are continuously controlling. We all condemned this. Actions, as I have said, are being taken against those who do wrong things and undermine the human rights of the citizens of this country instead of protecting them. Thank you, hon Speaker.