Madam Deputy Speaker, as a nation, we are in shock and still are unable to fully comprehend the horror of what we watched on television on Thursday. In a matter of moments, we were taken back to that dark time of our history no sane South African could ever wish to repeat. It was incomprehensible and inexcusable.
So we stand here today, in the aftermath, looking for answers. Thankfully, the President agreed to our request for a judicial commission of inquiry. This commission will find the answers the families and country need for closure. While this commission will find out where to apportion blame and eventual culpability, some issues are clear. Nothing justifies the excessive and tragic bloodshed, but nobody in all of this is innocent, especially not the police and definitely not the Minister of Police, who has for three years presided over and politically controlled the Police Service, which is gradually being militarised and is increasingly being turned into a force for state-sponsored and sanctioned violence against civilians.
The Minister must be held accountable for the Cele shoot-to-kill era, which he did nothing to stop and which we now had to see play out so graphically with, at last count, 44 dead. The Minister must be held accountable for the Mdluli era of crime intelligence, which has crippled the division and hollowed it out, rendering it ineffective to not only pre-empt but also properly respond to the events that transpired at Marikana last week. The Minister must be held accountable for sitting back like a lame duck whilst Cele reintroduced military ranks into the SAPS and, along with them, the culture of brute strength, strong men tactics and deadly force.
What happened last week speaks to two issues: the training of our SAPS and this militarisation of the service. Were the actions leading up to that fateful Thursday, when 34 men died, the actions of a well-trained police service? On Monday last week, possibly as the result of following orders, two officers died the most terrible deaths. Another colleague still fights for his life in hospital. And while they died, eight miners died - 10 dead - but the signs were not heeded.
The chaos that the whole world subsequently saw on Thursday was, the DA believes, a direct result of the pseudo-militarisation of the SAPS. The ANC now plans to demilitarise the SAPS again. It says this in the New National Development Plan. The sooner this happens the better.
This decision was supposed to bring back discipline to the ranks, yet what we witnessed was chaos. We saw police running in every direction, firing indiscriminately, and lines breaking down. They were police treating citizens as the enemy. This means we have, as a nation and under the leadership of this current Minister of Police, travelled full circle back to the militarised police who would shoot indiscriminately at a crowd of protesters, armed or not.
Those protesters may have been attempting to charge against impossible odds or they may have been running blindly away from the smoke of stun grenades which the SAPS had just fired into their midst. Where is the updated Public Order Policing Policy, Minister?
The next stage after our national grief will be anger and the search for a reason for all of this. We were shocked, grief-stricken and then angry when we watched Andries Tatane murdered in front of our eyes, shot with rubber bullets. Now we watched 34 people die in front of our eyes, shot with live bullets. It is against regulations to use live ammunition.
Unfortunately, on the same day as the President declared a week of national mourning, the new National Police Commissioner, Riah Phiyega, said that the police officers should not be sorry for the deaths of the protesters. She showed a gross lack of empathy at a time when the SAPS members needed a leader with an ironclad moral compass to assist them to make sense of this tragedy. One can only wonder what possessed her to make such a reckless comment as this when tensions were high, officers were dead, and the police were being referred to as serial killers by protesters. These comments should never have been allowed. The Minister, of course, said nothing.
No one should attempt to predetermine the outcome of the judicial commission of inquiry and above all else, and for the sake of our nation, all sides must express regret and apologies where due, and recognise the role they have played in the loss of life that occurred last week.
We have yet to experience the ramifications of this tragedy, which will come as surely as night follows day. Our reputation as a nation which could hold a peaceful Fifa World Cup is in tatters. Our economy will suffer. Our attraction to tourists fell the moment the first body hit the floor.
All of this because the Minister has for so long had his eyes and interests elsewhere. He is nothing but an empty suit. He must be held accountable because, instead of providing visionary leadership in a country in which society has seemingly normalised excessive violence, he has sat back, allowing populists to trample on our Constitution.