The Democratic Alliance (DA) says it’s almost a year after the July riots and police in KwaZulu-Natal are still not adequately prepared to respond to any possible future unrest.
The opposition party is conducting oversight visits to crime-ridden police stations in the province. On Monday, senior members of the party inspected police stations and satellite police stations in Richards Bay.
DA Shadow Minister of Police, Andrew Whitfield says lack of resources, low morale and insufficient training are hampering police effectiveness.
“I have been putting in some parliamentary questions to determine the state of readiness of SAPS to respond and received a shocking response that over 50% of the public order policing units fleet in this province is not operational.
This means that the public order police is completely inadequately resourced to tackle violent unrest. And we’ve come to see for ourselves what is the state and situation at station level and I can tell you that the moral of police officers at station level is very very low, the condition of satellite police stations is awful.”
SAHRC on oral submissions into the July 2021 riots in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng:
More than 350 people were killed and infrastructure damage amounting to billions of rand occurred during the riots.
Last week a member of the Social Cohesion Group and KwaZulu-Natal’s Economic Development MEC Ravi Pillay said like all other patriotic South Africans, they too have serious questions that they need answers to regarding the unrest.
“How is it possible that deliberate economic sabotage, destruction of property, the killing of people and creation of chaos and mayhem could occur in a democratic South Africa which is guarded by one of the best Constitutions in the world,” said Pillay.
July Unrest | SAHRC hears final oral evidence on the 2021 riots:
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