South Africans have no love for ‘oppressive’ police – trust gets lower by the day

The South African Police Service is still viewed as an oppressive instrument of the state and while the country has long moved from police brutality under apartheid, the past 24 years have shown continuous decrease in police confidence.

Incidents like the Marikana massacre and the ineptitude shown during the 2021 July unrest have done little to quell this perception.

To provide further context to this, the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) surveyed police confidence since 1998 to outline the policing perspective by the public, and since then, not once has more than half of the adult population stated they trust the police.

Trust levels on constant decline

Instead, the pattern of public confidence in the police between 1998 and 2021 show that trust levels during the 23-year period remained relatively low, remaining static during the years leading up to 2010 at levels of between 39% and 42%.

There was a sharp decline between 2011 and 2013 due to the August 2012 Marikana massacre, and it dipped again to a low 27% after the July unrest.

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“The 2016 to 2020 period was characterised by a modest fluctuation between 31% and 35%. The hard Covid lockdown experience, which included instances of police brutality in enforcing lockdown regulations, appears not to have an aggregated effect based on the 2020 survey results.

“In 2021, public trust in the police dipped to a low 27%. This appears to be linked to the July 2021 social unrest. Many have criticised the poor performance of the police during the unrest,” said authors of the report, Dr Benjamin Roberts and Dr Steven Gordon, researchers in capable and ethical state research division of the HSRC.

The Western Cape was the province with the least trust, having fallen by more than 20%, which far exceeds the average national decline of 7%.

During the 2010 to 2021 period, the adult public’s figures in the above province, including North West and Gauteng, have continuously been below the national average.

Police remain oppressive post-democracy

The South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) series, which the HSRC has been using for face-to-face interviews to administer the series, found several factors contributed to the lack of trust in law enforcement.

Victims of crime showed significantly lower levels of trust in police, with the fear of crime having a similar effect.

“Higher levels of fear are associated with lower trust in the police. This applies to classic measures such as fear of walking alone in one’s area after dark, as well as crime-specific fears like worrying about home robbery or violent assault. These associations have been found across multiple rounds of surveying,” the authors said.

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Experiences of policing are also a factor, with those who had bad encounters with cops generally having a low judgement of them.

In addition, perceptions of police corruption as well as officers treating the public with disrespect also played a role.

Politics and poor leadership to blame

Public confidence was the least of the police’s concerns before 1994, as they were known to be against the interests of the majority of the people and served a narrow interest of nationalist government.

Speaking to experts, it appears not much has changed.

Policing specialist Eldred De Klerk said the country had hoped the police in post-democracy would deliver a non-discriminatory approach that would serve the interests of safety and security for all citizens.

“But it’s the police themselves as an institution including police leadership that betrayed the public confidence and trust and have themselves to blame. This is what the police have brought upon themselves.

“There has been a systematic erosion of the idea that the police can prevent crime and keep us safe, that they can protect us and it’s definitely never been the idea within the police itself as an institution that they can serve and enforce the law while still retaining the dignity of a suspect, an alleged accused and of a victim.”

Eldred De Klerk

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“That in itself means that I as a citizen look to this institution and still continue to see the same aggressive policing that I might have experienced before. Secondly, it means I still see the police being an oppressive instrument,” said De Klerk.

Police rot started with Jackie Selebi

With the police having a string of police commissioners coming in and out in the past years, Institute for Security Studies founder Jakkie Cilliers said the decay in the police began with the appointment of former and late commissioner Jackie Selebi in 2000.

“It has gone down after that. Within the police, the fact that there is lack of permanent appointments at senior policing level is based on competence rather than on factional loyalty. It’s not about the money. The police are a large top-heavy structure and have received large budget increases over many years. We have one of the largest centralised policing systems in the world. It’s really staffing management and political interference,” Cilliers said.

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Political economic conditions, like in the Western Cape which has dipped in confidence the most, were also a cause. The gap between the rich and the poor and the entrenched apartheid architecture in the province has disjointed policing, De Klerk said.

“The Western Cape in terms of the politics has lengthened to police work being politicised. The under-policing and the lack of police resources and the debate and narrative that police are failing are prevalent in the Western Cape,” said De Klerk.

rorisangk@citizen.co.za