Acting President Paul Mashatile has told police to show criminals that they are “in charge.”

Mashatile spoke at the National Police Commemoration Day event on Sunday, 1 September, at the South African Police Officers’ Memorial at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. In his speech, Mashatile revealed that the South African Police Service (SAPS) lost 39 police officers in the 2023/2024 financial year in the line of duty. “These police officers who died while protecting South Africa and her people are not just a statistic; they were husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, and most of them were breadwinners in their families,” he said. 

Mashatile echoed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s call for tougher action against crime. He said that the Minister of Police, Senzo Mchunu, and the National Police Commissioner, General Fanie Masemola, cannot do their work when “we lose so many police officers to criminals.” Mashatile said that the ongoing brutality cannot continue. “An assault on SAPS is a direct attack on the state, and we must take action against individuals who perpetrate this crime, which is equal to treason,” he said. 

He urged the national police commissioner to let the police fight fire with fire. “Police officers must not die with their service firearms on their holsters when criminals refuse to surrender and start firing at police. When a shootout ensues between police and criminals, police have a duty to protect their lives, as well as those of their colleagues and all community members.”

South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world, with 70 people being killed daily. 

But should the police shoot to kill? Law Professor Pierre de Vos doesn’t think so. In response to the growing rate of alleged criminals being killed by the police in KwaZulu Natal, De Vos said in July that there was little evidence publicly available about who the suspects were and what crimes they were accused of having committed, what evidence the police had to conclude that these suspects were dangerous criminals; whether claims by the police that the suspects had opened fire on the police were true or false, or whether the arrest of the suspects might comfortably have been secured peacefully. “It is astonishing that so many citizens accept that all the claims (most of them not substantiated by any evidence) made by the police to justify the killing of the 40 suspects over the past four months are true,” he wrote. 

Meanwhile, the chair of the parliamentary portfolio committee on police, Ian Cameron, has rubbished the claims that the police are trigger-happy. “The SAPS already has a credibility deficit challenge, something the new police minister and all SAPS personnel must tackle head-on. But a blanket accusation that our women and men in blue are guilty of random killings is needless and destructive,” said Cameron.