Bheki Cele says AfriForum’s sanitisers are welcome, but they must use the right procedures

In a statement on Friday, Police Minister Bheki Cele said the SA Police Service’s rejection of a donation of 5,000 bottles of hand sanitiser from minority rights group AfriForum had occurred only because the donation didn’t go through official channels.

The minister welcomed “the goodwill of some civil society organisations who have extended a hand to the law enforcement agencies, augmenting what management has put in place in terms of hygienic and protective supplies to the members”.

AfriForum had reacted with shock on Thursday evening to news that their donation was refused, and that police in Gauteng who had already accepted the bottles needed to return them.

On the same evening, it was reported that a police station in Pretoria needed to be shut down after a police employee there tested positive for Covid-19.

In a statement, acting spokesperson Brigadier Mathapelo Peters said Cele had acknowledged the challenges that had come with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the national lockdown.

“One of the biggest challenges across all sectors of society has been the limited supply of the necessary hygienic disposables such as masks and hand gloves, as well as sanitisers that are understandably in high demand worldwide.

“The SAPS, whose members are at the coal face of this pandemic, is also facing this same challenge of shortage of protective and hygienic supplies.

“Minister Cele has commended the efforts by SAPS management to ensure as best as possible that all members on the ground and all police stations are adequately protected and observing the requisite hygienic protocols,” said Peters.

The police said that reports that “the SAPS in Gauteng had refused to accept a donation of hand sanitisers from AfriForum” together with a report on “leaked official and internal correspondence” (about the evacuation of the SAPS office in Arcadia) had been done, Cele believed, “with the malicious intention of blowing things out of proportion”.

ALSO READ: SAPS evacuate office due to Covid-19 infection – after refusing AfriForum’s hand sanitisers

Cele reiterated that, as with all government departments, the SAPS had a responsibility to uphold Treasury regulations and implement the donation policy of the organisation.

“Let me repeat what I said to SAPS management when we were still under a state of disaster: the national crisis we find ourselves in can never be used as justification to flout processes and procedures,” said Cele.

Cele encouraged AfriForum and “any other individual or organisation wishing to assist the SAPS with supplies to engage with the SAPS management at a national level for the necessary exemption in relation to gifts/donations”.

“It is important to clarify that the handing over of the said hand sanitisers by AfriForum to a specific SAPS unit in Gauteng could not be accepted as the donation did not go through the authorised processes as informed by Treasury regulations.

“The offer is welcome as a sign of goodwill and for this the minister will encourage the SAPS management to engage AfriForum to better coordinate this process of handing over and receiving of the donation.”

In an interview with cartoonist Jerm, AfriForum’s head of community safety Ian Cameron explained that his organisation had been approached for help by police members themselves and they had spent the week preparing the hand sanitisers. He estimated they had already spent about R300,000 on the project.

Cameron said that since the news of their sanitisers being rejected by the police broke, they had been approached by numerous other government bodies at the forefront of the country’s Covid-19 response also asking for assistance because government had “failed them”. He said even members of the SANDF had got in touch to ask for not just sanitiser but masks and gloves too.

“Everyone who is involved with our community safety work will receive hand sanitisers.”

He said they’d decided to make the donation to the police because of the greater risks to society of police officers contracting the disease and not being able to police the streets or spreading the virus prior to that.

“If emergency services are not there, communities will need to fend for themselves.”

Cameron said AfriForum was ready for that, though, if it came to it.

He added that the police bureaucracy in Gauteng had initially tried to prevent AfriForum from moving their sanitisers around by asking them to see their permits, which Cameron said “of course we had”.

He said only the Gauteng police had rejected their donation, while their efforts had been warmly welcomed everywhere else.

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