Hon Deputy Speaker, the national instruction on promotions in the SA Police Service currently allows people who have been investigated for wrongdoing to be promoted. It provides that employees against whom criminal or disciplinary investigations are pending or who have criminal convictions or findings of misconduct may be considered for promotion. The SAPS is supposed to give due regard to the merits of the cases to establish the suitability of a member, and only members found suitable are promoted. My answer with regard to this situation, hon member, is that I am not happy. Some members were promoted based on this very instruction.
Furthermore, in terms of this instruction, some members who were found not suitable for promotion were not promoted. For example, a certain member in KwaZulu-Natal was conditionally promoted, but subsequently dismissed on 21 June 2011 due to the seriousness of wrongdoing before promotion was effected.
Despite the above, I wish to inform Parliament that in December 2011, on my instruction, a joint team from the Civilian Secretariat for Police and SAPS human resource development conducted an extensive audit of the disciplinary processes within the SAPS. The actual audit has been completed and the final report will be submitted to my office by the end of March 2012.
However, the preliminary findings of this report highlight a number of deficiencies in our approach to disciplinary matters. In some cases, the audit even resulted in cases being reopened, and, in other cases, the officials involved in the disciplinary process - that is those who were presiding - ended up being charged.
The national instruction on promotions, as it currently stands, does not address issues of discipline management sufficiently. As a result, this national instruction and the implementation thereof are being reviewed and, as part of the final audit report, weaknesses will be rectified. I thank you, Deputy Speaker.