THE LOWLY NEWSPAPERMAN: Wrangles over expropriation and Metro Cops risk sinking to needless GNU depths

It was a weird week in the life of the Government of National Unity (GNU). There was Ashor Sarupen, the deputy minister of finance, leading a DA delegation to the Western Cape High Court to challenge his own government’s Expropriation Act. He was there as the chairperson of the DA’s Federal Council but the irony could not be lost. Even more ironic was that the first respondent in the case was his DA colleague Dean Macpherson, the public works minister whose department is supposed to implement the law.To add to this bizarre picture, joining the GNU partner in this application was AfriForum, the unabashed opponents of anything that reeks of transformation. Also in this corner was a creature known as the Vaderland Stigting, which describes itself as a Christian cultural movement “that was established with the main purpose of promoting Boer-Afrikaner interests, with regard to the economic, cultural and social rights, entitlements and needs of the Boer-Afrikaner”. The masthead on its Facebook bears images of Jan van Riebeek and other heroes of “die volk”. Some fellow travellers, one must say. To be fair to the DA it is the courts that decided to combine the cases, which had been brought separately.What this case does say, though, is that although the GNU functions in unison, there are some intractable issues that need clearer heads in order to avoid such confrontation. While it is understood that GNU parties are separate entities and must project their identities to their constituencies, conflicts such as this one are unnecessarily divisive. This has become a very emotive issue that has split opinion along largely racial lines and has echoes of the aborted Section 25 constitutional amendment debate of seven years ago. The matter has been simplified into the legislation being an “ANC land grab” and opposition to it being whites resisting economic transformation.It is trite to say maturity is required, but it has to be said. In itself, there is nothing wrong with the Expropriation Act, but it is the manner in which the ANC handled it that has brought us here. In a rush to score points so that it could add the legislation in its 2024 manifesto as one of the victories of the last administration, the ANC bungled its passage through Parliament. Elementary mistakes were made, giving way to credible and winnable challenges to the necessary law. We may now end up with the law being sent back to Parliament, where its passage will be much more difficult.Be that as it may, we are here now and the courts will decide.Cape crusader Another potential clash that could escalate is that of the powers of municipal police forces. This week, Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis declared an intergovernmental dispute with the acting police commissioner over the central government’s refusal to grant metro cops the powers to investigate certain categories of crimes. While the Constitution does give local governments the power to perform policing, the South African Police Act withholds investigative functions exclusively for the SAPS. Hill-Lewis is now arguing that this could be remedied by adding this to the SAPS amendment bill currently before Parliament.In his dispute, the Cape Town mayor says the city’s Metro Police seize about 400 illegal guns annually and, because they do not have investigative powers, they have to hand the cases over to the SAPS. Often the suspects have ended up back on the streets because the SAPS could not make a strong enough case for the National Prosecuting Authority to convict.“We refuse to accept that communities must live in daily fear of gang, gun and drug crime. The time has come to ‘catch and convict’, which our Metro Police stand ready to do in support of SAPS and the NPA… Put simply, when a Metro Police officer confiscates an illegal gun… the City should be empowered to build a successful docket for prosecutors to gain a conviction,” Hill-Lewis argued.The matter will now go to mediation and if that fails, it will end up in court, an unnecessary escalation given the simplicity of the solution. Devolving policing powers has been an ideological bone of contention between the ANC and the DA for most of the past three decades. While the ANC’s pivot has always been towards strengthening the national hand, the DA has argued that a localised response would be more effective because provinces know the conditions in their backyards best. The ANC’s position was further bolstered by the late national commissioner Jackie Selebi, who even believed that all municipal police forces should fall under the SAPS’s command. But the devolution argument has gained some traction as provincial commissioners, notably KwaZulu-Natal’s Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, have argued that overcentralisation hobbles their ability to do basic things like repair vehicles. However, at the political level the commitment to national control seems immovable.Giving Metro Police forces the powers to investigate and make cases would even be simpler and less politically charged than devolving the SAPS powers. There would be no organogram restructurings and no need to reorganise lines of command. It is also a no-brainer. Residents of the biggest cities bemoan the fact that the Metro Police forces are no more than glorified traffic cops who apprehend speeders and people speaking on their phones. But that is how they see themselves. They do not see themselves as real policemen, despite most of them outflanking SAPS members in terms of pay and benefits. South Africa’s crime crisis cries out for reason on this one.The Metro Police forces would not take over the SAPS’ major functions. They will never have the capacity to take on organised crime or investigate major crimes. But there are many that fall within their ambit, and giving them those powers would benefit the greater effort.It would be such a breath of fresh air if the mayors of other cities, particularly the ANC-run metros, would join Hill-Lewis in this call. Firoz Cachalia has so far been the kind of police minister South Africa has been wishing for. He has been practical and not bound by the ideological hide of his predecessors, despite being an ANC man through and through. Avoiding this battle and boosting South Africa’s crime-fighting capacity would be yet another feather in his cap as he reforms the system. DM