Durban — Next Saturday will be a year since the July riots that broke out in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
A senior SAPS officer who spoke to the Daily News said the scale of the situation and looting made it impossible for police to contain the situation that day.
He described the scene in Northdale, Pietermaritzburg, where black residents from informal settlements clashed with Indian business owners protecting their property.
“The clash resulted in a stand-off in the two groups, to an extent that the Indian community ended up attacking the people from the squatter camps, saying that they are the cause of the whole unrest and they want to loot their shops.”
On an average normal day it would have been contained without the shedding of blood and disaster, he said.
“But, because on that day, the police were so stretched, they failed to respond and stand down the riot that resulted in racial attacks. Police were stretched, and a bit under-resourced, because most of the policing was being done by private security and communities themselves, so police were totally overstretched.”
There was no proper planning as no one had anticipated what was about to happen that day, he said.
“The sheer scale of the looting and the vastness of the area made it impossible for police to deal with the numbers and be able to contain the situation. We were armed with firearms, but you can’t shoot people who are rioting. You can’t shoot people who are said to be demonstrating who were not really a true danger to your life. It was very difficult because we couldn’t arrest them either because that was going to cause further unrest.”
At some stage, police ran out of rubber bullets and did not have enough firearms at discharge available for members, he said.
“Public Order Police were deployed in the Pietermaritzburg area. They were so few in numbers. We were stretched to the max.”
The member said the SAPS was extremely under-capacitated to deal with the riots in terms of resources, including the members themselves.
“I was there on the ground with the other members, and we had to protect that area where there were racial confrontations and also attend to scenes where people were looting factories, and we had to protect other places that were not yet looted.”
The lessons learnt from the riots were around capacitating the force as well as beefing up Public Order Policing and its understanding as it’s more about prevention than anything else, he said.
“We need certain skills as well to deal with people who are demonstrating who have not yet committed a crime. We also need more armoured vehicles to deal with such situations, in a bid to capacitate the police.
“We need more training as well, because police are not trained to control the public. It's not every police officer who is trained to handle those kinds of situations.”
He said the cases that resulted from the unrest were difficult to investigate, given that members of the public would not single out known perpetrators.
“People would just say a group of people; a group of residents from Northdale. It was very difficult to ensure that those people get justice.
“Although those cases are still pending in court, but in terms of making arrests, no sufficient arrests were made due to the situation on that day as well as the way in which the criminal procedure functions.
“The perpetrator has to be identified and linked to the commission of the offence and can only be charged if they actively participated.”
The member, commenting on other SAPS members said to have been involved in the racial clashes in Northdale, said the situation during the riots was strange.
He said: “We found that the so-called police are residents from that Northdale area, so they had also grouped themselves with the community to prevent attacks on their houses and businesses. It was to sympathise with the community, but also they belong to the community themselves.
“It was a very difficult balance to strike. They ensured that they did not go out of their way to go and attack black people because of their race, but it was in that spirit of saying we are safeguarding our businesses and community to prevent attack and looting. The thinking was also that not only are the Africans from squatter camps going to loot shops, but they would come into their homes and help themselves. The situation of the day was unprecedented. It was very complex.”
He added that officers who were identified were being dealt with as the necessary steps were taken.
Daily News