Dare Not Linger

by Nelson Mandela

  It was central to Mandela’s leadership that he should continuously give grounds for optimism about the future. He saw this as one of his most important tasks. Knowing that he had inherited a wasteful and flawed state machinery, Mandela had to avoid the failures that plagued newly independent countries when colonial administrations gave way to liberation movements. The settlers, or the previous apartheid administration and its supporters, were South Africans and not an adjunct of a foreign colonising power; the settlers, as it were, were settled – South Africa was their home. The transition inevitably entailed some accommodation of existing state personnel.

  Mandela’s government had to reorient the state and its priorities. It had to rationalise what had been fragmented. As Allister Sparks put it: ‘At the city, town and country level, a hodgepodge of local government institutions with their roots in the incredibly complex apartheid system, where the races were kept physically and politically apart, has been restructured into a compact system.’4

  While all this was happening, the civil service corps was required to reflect the diversity of the country’s population. Mandela took a pragmatic view of such complexities.

  ‘When we win an election we hold office,’ he said. ‘We don’t gain control of political power. To gain political power means that we have to get control of the civil service, of the security forces – that is, the police and the army; we have to have our people in telecommunications and so on. That is going to take some time to organise. For the first months or year we are going to lean very heavily on the present services. But the process of reorganisation will immediately start, to put our qualified people on the policy structures that take decisions. And we must expect that it is going to take some more time as we train more people.’5

  In addition to this, of course, there was the establishment of the nine new provincial administrations to replace the four existing provinces, ten Bantustans and two quasi-administrations that were meant to service coloured and Indian populations, as well as a new local government system.

  The ‘sunset clauses’ agreed upon during the negotiations guaranteed the jobs of old-order civil servants during the integration period. Similarly, the retention of the heads of the Commission for Public Administration, which would later become the Public Service Commission, secured a smooth transition and reduced the likelihood of counter-revolution.

  These successes were sometimes punctuated by difficulties that detracted from progress achieved. The ANC’s lack of training and capacity was a source of great concern. Zola Skweyiya, who would become the minister of public service and administration, was blunt: ‘When it came to the question of the civil service, the public service, I don’t want to tell lies,’ he said, ‘there never was very much preparation on the side of the ANC.’6

  With characteristic candour, Mandela also honed in on the problem, saying, ‘We had our policies on which we worked for a long time, but we had no experience.’7

  If the ANC leaders and senior cadre lacked technical expertise in aspects of public service administration, for instance in the security forces, they made up for the deficit by shadowing apartheid functionaries during the negotiations and in the Transitional Executive Council, whose first meeting was on 7 December 1993. The sub-councils of the TEC oversaw regional and local government and traditional authorities, law and order – stability and security, defence, finance, foreign affairs, the status of women and intelligence. Those dealing with security, defence and intelligence developed codes of conduct and mechanisms for oversight and control, which served as a point of departure for the new democratic government after the election. The ANC was determined that these agencies would cease operating in the old ways and conform to the democratic ethos.8

  As has been said already, for Mandela security was the key to a stable transition; the building blocks towards realising his democratic ideal. The way forward, in his reckoning, was to ensure that officers from the previous regime were embraced and given a stake in the new democracy as active custodians and creators of the future. Furthermore, in these early days for South Africa’s fledgling democracy, a great deal of valuable information about human rights violations had yet to be revealed; a precipitate shake-up of the security forces could see evidence destroyed, depriving the government of information that would be crucial to understanding the past and ensuring it was not repeated.9

  In November 1994, six months into the new dispensation, aware of the involvement of state security elements in seeking to block meaningful transformation, the new minister of safety and security, Sydney Mufamadi, asked Mandela to address the top police command. Mandela spoke to them from behind closed doors, now and then glancing up from the notes he had prepared for the meeting. Knowing that a law respected throughout the world is that a constabulary – any constabulary – must be bonded by a strict code of solidarity, and that cops generally despised weakness, he had to be firm and conciliatory in equal measure, the better to quash cliquish tendencies:

  ‘I welcome the opportunity to exchange views with the command structure of the SAPS [South African Police Service]. You are responsible for law enforcement. You can only achieve this objective if you receive the full support of Government.

  ‘I am here not as a representative of any political party – neither the National Party nor the ANC – but as head of the Government of the country.

  ‘I believe in a police force which is committed to serving the nation as a whole, not a particular political party.

  ‘I believe in a force that maintains the highest professional standards. Such high standards should be maintained even in the course of making a radical restructuring and reorientation of the police services.

  ‘We have to bring about such radical transformation, but we would like to do that with the full cooperation of the Commanding Officer of the Police and the entire Command Staff.’10

  Very few South Africans do not have a tale of woe involving the police. If the police are often viewed with suspicion throughout the world, it was even more so during the heyday of apartheid and during the transition that Mandela was steering. For as long as there was statutory apartheid, the trope of the cruel cop would feature in South African literature and song – and almost all township theatre would use it as shorthand for state cruelty. Knowing this, Mandela coaxed the police service to reach deep inside itself for solutions towards its legitimacy:

  ‘It would be regrettable if the perception is strengthened that you’re opposed to such transformation, that you want to defend the racist nature of the force in which a white minority dominates, and where blacks are relegated to inferior positions.

  ‘You must not appear to be giving in to these changes only under pressure.

  ‘You must never forget that the changes that we are introducing in this country were brought about by the struggle of the oppressed people of our country, some of whom paid the highest price. Many of these died in police custody, and others were so tortured in detention that they are crippled for the rest of their lives. They will never allow, especially now that they are in power, for any Government agency or department to undermine their programmes to better their lives.

  ‘You must also not forget that the eyes of the world are focussed on South Africa.

  ‘Notwithstanding the brutality of the apartheid system generally – and that of the police in particular – during the run-up to the elections, I urged my people to forget the past; to work for reconciliation and for nation building.

  ‘With a few insignificant exceptions, the entire country has responded marvellously to this message. Black and white, Shangaan, Venda and Sotho, Afrikaans- and English-speaking South Africans are now working together to build a new South Africa.

  ‘The police must not appear to be opposed to this movement and spirit, paying only lip service to the idea, whilst working day and night to undermine what we are doing.’11

  Mandela continued by telling them he had not only appealed to mainly black South Africans – most of whom h
ad suffered hideously in the hands of the law – to have a change of heart towards the police; he had also taken concrete steps to ensure a peaceful transition. He had met General van der Merwe some months before the elections, addressed the command staff of the SADF and addressed the command structure of the South African Police (SAP) on 16 January 1993.*

  ‘The SAP,’ he said, ‘have responded very well. They made a formidable impression on the day of the inauguration, as did the SADF. The generals of [the] SAP must not appear to be against this development.

  ‘Ghosts of the past can continue to haunt us if we do not become a visible part of the current changes. Hit squads are still a disturbing feature in the crime situation; and the failure of the SAP to bring them to book is a source of great concern to me.’12

  He rattled off what troubled him: the lack of disciplinary action when police were shown to have been involved in the military training of IFP members; the failure to search illegal IFP training camps; and turning a blind eye to open defiance by IFP members carrying illegal weapons. He decried the double standards seen in ‘the sharp and almost vicious manner in which SAP acts against ANC’ whilst folding their arms when Eugene Terre’Blanche led the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging in action that killed scores of people in Bophuthatswana before the elections.* Aware of police involvement in crime, he pointed to the impact of high crime levels on discouraging future financial investment in the country, and concluded by voicing his concern about the working conditions of ordinary members of the police.13

  There would be many such encounters, some occasioned by the urgency of the situation, others by Mandela’s need to satisfy himself that the police were still on track. Apart from unfailingly attending the meetings of the Cabinet Committee on Security and Intelligence, according to Thabo Mbeki, Mandela also interacted with the police at all levels. The no-holds-barred engagement behind closed doors was matched by Mandela’s public appeals to communities to support the police whom he credited with making an effort to embrace the new South Africa.

  Mufamadi remembers how, as minister of safety and security, he would suggest when Mandela should meet with the police. Often, though, Mandela ‘would also initiate meetings with police just to know what they think about the changing situation’. Mandela would

  give advice when he felt it was warranted, and encourage them [the police] to stay focused on their work. There were times when a particular form of crime would show itself as a national priority crime, such as the cash-in-transit robberies that emerged at one point as a disturbing trend of organised crime by people who in some instances had military training. We established a special unit to investigate that. Once Mandela became aware of it, he said, ‘Can I meet them and hear what they think about the task? Have we given them enough resources to do their work?’ When they [the special unit] made breakthroughs, he would invite them and congratulate them. But at all times, even as he was talking in positive terms, encouraging them to do more of the good work they were doing, he would always draw a line at things he didn’t want to see [being] repeated, things that belonged to the past.14

  In December 1996, when Mandela was supposed to be holidaying in his ancestral home in Qunu, in the Eastern Cape, he initiated a meeting with the police in the province. He had good news for the police officers in the form of a report from the National Crime Information Management Centre of the SAPS, which recorded a marked reduction that year in incidents of serious crime, such as hijackings, armed robberies, politically motivated violence, murder and taxi violence.

  ‘Notwithstanding the many problems which some communities in the Eastern Cape still have,’ he said, ‘e.g. taxi violence in Port Elizabeth, violence in Qumbu, Tsolo, Mqanduli, as well as gang-related crime in the northern areas of P. E. [Port Elizabeth], the E. Cape as a Province, experienced such a decline in levels of serious crime in 1996.’15

  The Eastern Cape had been the epicentre of the struggle against apartheid, a province that was the home of a disproportionately large percentage of ANC leadership. As it was his birthplace, Mandela felt conflicted that it was the poorest of the nine provinces and the one most riven with crime. This breakthrough, therefore, was a real achievement, given the fact that, while the police were fighting crime, ‘at the same time they were attending to the task of restructuring the police service and amalgamating three agencies within one province, they were amalgamating the Transkei police, the Ciskei police and the then SAP’.

  He encouraged those ‘who are committed to serving the community’, and commented on ‘a few elements within the SAPS who do things which bring the police service into disrepute’, observing that ‘the fact that such elements are often exposed by their own colleagues, will in the long term, convince the communities that the police have irrevocably broken with the past.

  ‘One of the problems which dogged the province is the corruption which pervades the various state departments. The fact that some of the high-profile cases of theft of taxpayers’ money remain unsolved, does not contribute to good public image of the police. It is important to bear in mind that the credibility of the SAPS will derive from the feeling that the SAPS is committed to solving problems experienced by our people.’16

  General van der Merwe had told Mandela before the 1994 election that he intended to retire early. Much to Mandela’s irritation, Van der Merwe had wanted Lieutenant General Sebastiaan ‘Basie’ Smit as his successor.17* Nonetheless, Mandela had wanted him to stay on. He wanted to reassure the general and his subordinates that they were not going to be persecuted for past crimes and misdemeanours and that there was a place for them in the new South Africa – provided, of course, that they participated in building the future and worked towards ensuring that there was no recurrence of past wrongdoings. However, Van der Merwe showed little enthusiasm for the investigations into the continued existence and operations of hit squads or for participating in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was expected to expose structural support for the ongoing violence. The relationship between Van der Merwe and Minister Mufamadi began to deteriorate, and Mandela became convinced that he needed to appoint the first National Commissioner, in line with the new South African Police Service Act. Eventually, George Fivaz, who had been part of the police national change-management team, was appointed to replace General van der Merwe.*18

  In setting out the evolution of the security structures, Mandela was surer of his ground, an architect seeing the various elements of his blueprints becoming more concrete, and in his unfinished memoir he expands on the situation at some length:

  ‘It was under those circumstances that George Fivaz became the new National Commissioner. Mr Sydney Mufamadi became the Minister of Safety and Security. The two were the foremost pioneers in the creation of a new South African police force dedicated to the service of all our people regardless of colour or creed. In the National Crime Prevention Strategy (NCPS), which came out in 1996, and in other policy documents that followed, they candidly analysed the formidable challenges facing the Department of Safety and Security.

  ‘They pointed out that the first democratic elections in 1994 did not bring a system of policing which was well placed to create a legitimate police service out of the eleven police forces constituted under apartheid.

  ‘They reminded us all that policing in South Africa was traditionally highly centralised, paramilitary and authoritarian. While these charac-teristics ensured that the police were effective under apartheid in controlling the political opponents of the government, it meant that they were poorly equipped for crime control and prevention in the new democracy.

  ‘Under apartheid rule, they stressed, the police force lacked legitimacy, and functioned as an instrument of control, rather than as a police service dedicated to ensuring the safety of all citizens. Thus historically, the police had had little interest in responding to crimes in the black areas. In 1994, as much as 74% of the country’s police stations were situated in white suburbs and business districts.

  ‘Po
lice presence in townships was used to anticipate and respond to collective challenges to apartheid. This mode of policing necessitated the mobilisation of force requiring skills and organisation very different from that needed to police a democratic order in which government seeks to ensure the safety of all citizens. That inheritance had a number of important consequences, which weakened the ability of the Department to combat crime.

  ‘The study pointed out that the authoritarian policing had few (if any) systems of accountability and oversight, and did not require public legitimacy in order to be effective. Thus with the advent of democracy in South Africa, systems of accountability and oversight were not present.

  ‘New mechanisms such as the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) – a complaints body tasked with investigating abuses within the SAPS, situated outside of the police, but reporting directly to the Minister – provided the means of limiting the occurrence of human rights abuses.

  ‘The study contends that the South African Police Service had not had a history of criminal detection characteristic of the police in other democratic societies. The collection, collation and presentation of evidence to secure the prosecution of criminals were weakly developed in many areas. This was reflected by, among other indicators, the training levels and experience of the Detective component of the SAPS.

  ‘In 1994, only about 26% of detectives had been on a formal investigation training course, while only 13% of detectives had over six years’ experience. In any event, those detective skills present in the police force before 1994 were concentrated in white areas.

  ‘According to the study, the problems of criminal detection were mirrored in the area of criminal intelligence. Intelligence gathering structures were orientated towards the political opponents of the apartheid state. Consequently, crime intelligence, particularly as it pertained to increasingly sophisticated forms of organised crime, required immediate improvement.