Blue and yellow balloons coloured up the sky over Kraaifontein Police Station on Friday morning to honour the memory of fallen policemen and -women on National Police Day.
“On this day every year the South African Police Service remembers the sacrifices that the men and women in blue have made and continue to make in service to the public; who put their lives on the line to protect citizens of our country,” WO Louis Strydom from Kraaifontein police said to TygerBurger on Friday.
According to Strydom, five policemen from Kraaifontein Police Station – one of the top 30 murder stations in the country – have died in the line of duty in the last decade.
Also commemorating the day, Reagen Allen, provincial minister for police oversight and community safety, said recruitment in the police is lagging behind by approximately 20 years and just less than 90 000 officers should be on the ground in South Africa.
Statistics
In the 2021-’22 financial year, the ideal number of officers was 193 476, with an actual of only 105 935 officers, according to Allen.
In the Western Cape, the granted establishment is 21 367, but as at the 2020-’21 financial year, this stood at 19 505.
In Kraaifontein, one of the 13 priority stations in the province, there is only one police officer for every 721 people.
“Not only has the requirement never been met, but staffing at station level has declined to such an extent that it has become clear that the national government will and cannot address police resourcing anywhere in South Africa,” he said.
“This is a clear indictment on the national government and the police’s senior management who all sit in Pretoria far from the daily realities of too many South Africans. For officers to be more effective in their crime fighting efforts, they need to be afforded the required resources, which includes the human resource, so that there are sufficient officers to combat crime.”
Allen said the continued use of the theoretical human resource requirement, a formula used to determine the strength of components at a national and provincial level to allocate officers, is confirmation that nothing will change in how the police deploy their officers.
“This all, despite the Equality Court ruling in 2018 that human resource allocation in the Western Cape discriminated on the basis of race and poverty. The national government does not care about our people’s safety,” he said. According to him, the 1 118 newly-trained officers that were due to be allocated to the Western Cape by December 2022 have also not landed on our shores.
The ultimate sacrifice
In a message of support to Kraaifontein Police Station, police union Popcru stated that policemen and -women “stand in the gap” by exposing themselves for the protection of others.
“We remember not only these officers who made the ultimate sacrifice, but all officers who have put their lives on the line for their communities. They have stood in the gap between justice and injustice. You do the work we could not do, in places we would not go, with courage we do not possess. You stand in the gap for us, and for that we are grateful.
“You deal with the worst of our citizens, in the most dangerous situations, with the least amount of violence possible. And you do this day in and day out, week after week, year after year, for too little pay, and even less appreciation.
“It is no wonder that the ‘thin blue line’ binds fellow officers so tightly. No one else could possibly understand what you do each day,” the message read.
