Numerous times police actions during civil protests have resulted in deaths or serious injuries on the part of protesting citizens and bystanders. Surely, enough is enough?!
A number of points need to be made in addressing this issue.
First, our police are clearly sadly untransformed, despite having Black leadership. Black leadership seemingly will never guarantee transformation, as long as the police tactics, methodologies and tools are the same as they were under Apartheid.
Second, clearly our police don’t have a clue about dealing with peaceful civil demonstrations. Under Apartheid, the then government and their police force didn’t care for Black demonstrators, because for them they were the ‘enemy’ (as wrong as that thinking was). Using armed force, therefore, seemed ‘justified’, and in any case they didn’t care about the loss of Black lives or well-being. Human rights were non-existent.
In a democracy, however, that dichotomy doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. Moreover, the role of the police is not just to protect property, but more importantly to protect the lives and well-being of citizens, both the protesters and non-protesters. Participating in a protest doesn’t suddenly remove or reduce one’s constitutional rights; in fact, the very act of peaceful protest is protected by the constitution.
However, coming armed to a protest clearly belies this. It appears that our police view Black demonstrators in similar fashion as happened under Apartheid, as the ‘enemy’. It appears the default position of the police is always to come to a protest to 'kick-ass'.
It is high time for the government and parliament to take drastic steps to create a new policing paradigm fit for a human rights culture. This includes retraining the police command, but also more critically, ensuring that police deployed to a civil protest are never ever armed, not even with rubber bullets.
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