Chairperson, the ICD was established to investigate complaints of brutality, criminality, and misconduct against members of the SAPS. Now the SAPS has a very poor track record on anticorruption initiatives, managed from within. In addition, the SAPS closed down the successful anticorruption unit in 2002, on the grounds of lack of accountability and transformation. Now this closure created a void that the ICD has not been able to fill due to deliberately maintained resource and staffing constraints.
Now that the ANC has shut down the Scorpions, the only unit left that could investigate police corruption would be the ICD. The provincial heads of the ICD have stated that every one of them is currently investigating reports of torture by members of the SAPS as well as deaths at the hands of the police and figures have shown a significant increase in these deaths for the second year in a row.
Yet, when the ICD investigates, 42% of its recommendations are not acted upon by the SAPS. In fact, the SAPS has no legislative compulsion to act on ICD recommendations at all. According to a briefing by the ICD the number of complaints received against the SAPS has increased to 6 119. Deaths in police custody, or as a result of police action, have also increased up 912 in the last year. For the last three years prior to August 2008, R90 million was spent on the salaries of suspended SAPS members. This, in turn, has implications for the public credibility of the SAPS which should, at all times, be beyond reproach, and says much about the attitude of the SAPS towards corruption and maladministration.
This House has a moral obligation to strengthen the ICD, which has, since its inception, been deliberately kept underresourced. The Minister claimed on television recently that he was strengthening the unit, but the truth is that R3 million was then summarily subtracted from their already inadequate budget. They are told to expand but they have no money to do that. We have two separate Votes but nothing for the ICD. What is being done to this unit is a disgrace and we will not vote for this totally inadequate budget.