Disciplinary System Is Flawed; Patekile’s Conduct Shows Why

Statement by Nicholas Gotsell MP – DA NCOP Member on Security & Justice:

The DA welcomes the Acting Minister of Police, Prof. Firoz Cachalia’s acknowledgement that the SAPS Disciplinary Regulations of 2016 contain loopholes that undermine discipline, ethics and public trust in the South African Police Service.

This follows the Acting Minister’s public admission last week that SAPS is not up to the job of fighting crime in the Western Cape. These two statements, read together, are not accidental. They speak directly to the same problem. Crucially, the Minister’s acknowledgement of a broken disciplinary system was made in response to a case in which the Western Cape Provincial Commissioner, Lt Gen Thembisile Patekile, overturned the dismissal of a police officer caught with large quantities of tik and mandrax and unlawfully in possession of a SAPS patrol vehicle, replacing it with a one-month suspension.

That decision alone illustrates why SAPS is failing in the Western Cape. Whilst hard-working men and women in blue put their lives on the line every day, officers implicated in serious criminal conduct are returned to service by the man in charge.

This is not an isolated lapse. A clear pattern has emerged in which dismissals for serious misconduct are repeatedly softened or reversed under Patekile’s authority, while disciplinary hearings are chaired by senior officers who themselves carry adverse findings.

Patekile’s routine appointment of compromised chairpersons, like Major General Dladla – an Eastern Cape cop who was previously found guilty of losing a SAPS-issued firearm, to preside over serious disciplinary matters destroys the credibility of the entire process and entrenches a culture of protection rather than accountability.

The Acting Minister’s acknowledgement and confirmation of the DA’s call for an overhaul of the SAPS Disciplinary Code therefore amounts to an implicit concession that the way disciplinary powers are being exercised at provincial level is part of the problem. The DA welcomes the Acting Minister’s commitment to review the SAPS Disciplinary Code, but any review that focuses only on technical wording and not on how these powers are being abused in practice will fail.

The DA will now formally write to the Acting Minister to demand a clear timeline for the review, full details of who will lead it and to insist that Parliament – and the DA in particular – be formally involved in the process. We will further insist that the unilateral power of a Provincial Commissioner to overturn dismissals be removed or fundamentally restricted.

South Africans cannot be protected by a police service where a Provincial Commissioner recycles criminals back into the system and discipline is overseen by compromised insiders. The Code must change – and Patekile must answer.