Labour Court orders promotion of ten Afrikaner police bomb experts

Adriana Stuijt's "journalism during apartheid "site ^ | 12-10-02 | staff

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Labour Court orders promotion of ten Afrikaner police bomb experts also: 25% of Mpumalanga police are illiterate De Wet Potgieter reports in Rapport newspaper on DEC 8 2002 that the Johannesburg Labour Court has ruled in favour of ten Afrikaner policemen - - all bomb exposal experts -- who had filed suit citing racial discrimination in regards to their promotions. The success of their court claim might have widespread repercussions for the entire government service, which has deliberately discriminated against Afrikaners and other ethnic-minorities in state employment to favour the advancement of African workers. Judge Adolf Landman ordered that ten of the eleven police inspectors -- all highly trained in bomb exposal techniques -- must be immediately promoted to the rank of Captains as had been their black colleagues with the identical qualifications. The ten bomb disposal experts have been waiting for the last two years to be promoted. In 2000 and 2001 they were denied permission to apply for jobs with the rank of captain because these jobs had been reserved for African applications only.   Judge Landman also ordered that their promotions would have to be made retroactive from two years early and that the salarie differences would have to be paid to the men. refunded to reflect their rank as captain. Only one of the eleven applications did not succeed for technical reasons. Landman heard the court's last arguments on 30 October this year while all eleven applicants had been on standby while colleagues in Soweto and Bronkhorstspruit were defusing bombs, allegedly planted by " rightwing terrorists." Their advocate Sakkie Prinsloo submitted that his clients were being discriminated against on racial grounds -- because the open posts the men wanted to apply for could not find any suitably qualified applicants among African policemen at all.   Even after fast-tracked training seasons were arranged for some applicants, only six eventually qualified for the posts -- although much less qualified and experienced than the eleven Afrikaner bomb disposal experts.   Prinsloo told the court that the country " could be plunged into a security crisis " if the police were to lose these experienced experts.   Experts warned that government departments such as the police - as well as private companies -- might now have to readjust their " positive discrimination policies"  against white applicants due to the labour court decision.   However Dr. Johann van Rensburg, labour consultant, pointed out that the country's constitution justified such policies of positive discrimination - and he did not foresee any problems as a result.   He warned that employers "sometimes erroneously believed that they could now just hire and fire people from various ethnic minorities as they pleased even though this disadvantaged others. "Such actions must be undertaken under the constitutionally correct legal procedures. "If companies and government departments followed the approved programmes, they would not have problems." He felt that " sloppy management " -- such as now apparently is showing up in the SA Police -- could cause more court actions like this.   Prof. Barney Erasmus of the long-distance university Unisa's department of business management said employers often are negligent in the "correct application of the Law on Positive Discrimination." Judge Landman 's ruling in favour of these police bomb disposal experts confirms that some organisations simply engage in very poor planning of such policies. "This ruling should be a wakeup call for all organizations which also engage in such sloppy management of their labour policies," he warned. 25% of Mpumalanga police cannot read or write: Meanwhile, it has also come to light that -- while the educated young male applicants for police jobs are being shunned by the ANC-regime --  one in four South African policemen in Mpumalanga cannot read or write properly and do not have a matric qualification. This means they cannot write properly detailed crime-scene reports, cannot understand complex cases or evidence, and cannot conduct forensic investigations.   And, when functionally illiterate investigators do try to compile crime dockets, the cases are simply thrown out of court because of insufficient evidence, conflicting statements or flawed investigations. The extent of the problem in Mpumalanga's 6 000-strong police force has been exposed by the provincial legislature's portfolio committee on safety and security. Committee chair Gelana Sindane told the legislature the problem was denying justice to many of South Africa's poorest people, because skilled investigators were employed only on high-profile cases involving affluent or foreign people. The biggest losers, she said, were South Africa's rape survivors who were often traumatised a second time by disrespectful, poorly equipped and illiterate policemen who failed to collect enough evidence to ensure a conviction. Independent watchdog bodies such as the Institute of Security Studies agree. ISS senior justice researcher Ted Leggett warned: "Many policemen simply cannot draft statements that will stand up in court. "And, the government's rush to put 26 000 policemen on the streets for visible crime prevention isn't helping, because they've shortened their training and lowered standards to get the numbers out there. Emphasising that international case studies have proved that the quality of police investigators is often far more important than the numbers of officers, Leggett also warned that the government's new emphasis of sector policing depended on skilled law enforcers. "Sector policing, which is basically geographic or community policing, is based on much more community interaction, intelligence gathering and the communication of this intelligence. That all requires literacy and other fairly advanced skills," he said. The police have, Leggett added, tried to mitigate the impact by ensuring that illiterate officers are assigned to guard duty in courts or at holding cells.   Mpumalanga's legislature has called on national authorities to urgently improve the quality of rural policing by deploying more officers to the province, renovating existing police stations, building trauma centres for rape survivors at all stations, and replacing police patrol cars with 4x4 vehicles that can access the province's mountainous rural hinterland. Sindane warned that any delay would make it even more difficult to combat the rapidly growing organised-crime sector. And illiteracy is not confined to the police service: Sindane's report to the legislature was itself riddled with inconsistencies and grotesque grammatical errors. Legislature chief whip Jabu Mahlangu said the report was incorrectly formatted and unacceptably vague on a series of important findings. That's why it could not be accepted as a public record of the committee's work. "I have spoken with the committee chair and will be meeting everyone to ensure that a proper report is drawn up," he said. Sindane, who earns more than R25 000 a month as a committee chair, refused to say how much the flawed report cost the taxpayer. Her eight-member committee was joined by a National Council of Provinces team that flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg and then Nelspruit twice this year to help research the report during a tour of 13 separate provincial police stations. All eight politicians, as well as an unspecified number of support staff, ran up transport and hotel bills during the jaunts. Sindane conceded this week that her report hadn't been sufficiently substantiated, but insisted that a revised report would be ready only in February 2003. She was unable to verbally answer a series of basic questions arising out of the report, including requests for explanations for any of the committee's 10 key recommendations.   Legislature spokesman Themba Shube confirmed that the speaker and secretary's offices were looking into the issue, but declined to comment further. - African Eye News Service http://www.news24.com/Rapport/Content_display/RapportArticleIndex/0,5798,752_1295182,00.html http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,1113,2-7-1442_1296024,00.html

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