19 January 2020
We need to raise the bar in security sector or will remain world’s laughing stock
This is what we do as South Africans and it’s not necessarily a bad thing: we laugh our lungs out when we are embarrassed.
And so it was that when those four decorated officers selected to do a salutation to bid farewell to a giant of our nation, Dr Richard Maponya, fumbled their moves, we laughed. The gaffe took place in front of two former presidents and a sitting president. The gnashing of teeth must have been on fleek. If any of these presidents passed on, God forbid, should they expect such ridiculous but amusing conduct at their services?
Others, as expected, took out their cameras or cellphones and recorded themselves doing what became known as the #Maponyapolice or #Maponyachallenge.
Behind the rancorous laughter lies deep disbelief about how police can fluff what, to us mere mortals, appears a simple salutation. The type of drill they were to do does not even require a lot of practice. I am shocked that the four actually practised the drill. Can you imagine what it would have been like without practise? I am not laughing. Now, instead of people remembering how Maponya was sent off, we laugh at how messed up our policing is.
The authorities, by this I mean the police, intelligence, protocol and big state event managers, need to pay attention to how we mess up our big events. Many will remember how, on so big an occasion as Nelson Mandela’s memorial at FNB Stadium, we assigned US President Barack Obama, a leader of the free world to some, a fake interpreter. For an event watched by people the world over, we just seemed not to care about how we came across or simply just wanted, for some reason, to sabotage ourselves.
Memories of a member of the South African National Defence Force crashing into a pole while trying to show off the defence force’s strength at the historic inauguration of President Cyril Ramaphosa are still fresh. Social media went into overdrive, precipitating a public relations job to minimise the embarrassment.
These are just three examples at massive events where we seem to simply shoot ourselves in the foot but the list, as they say, is endless. The question isn’t how many times – but why we do this to ourselves? For how long are we going to be the laughing stock of the world? And, through hashtags, we join in on the laughter.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing to laugh at ourselves, especially given the trauma of colonialism and apartheid we have been through. We must, however, know when to put the best versions of ourselves forward.
The main problem is that we treat jobs in the security sector as belonging to those who don’t pass well at school. Very few, if any, of those paraded as leading lights of the matric class of 2019 are being encouraged to take up posts in the security sector. The brightest want to go to university while those who won’t be accommodated will make their way to TVET colleges. Those at the very bottom of the pass rankings will make it to police training facilities, with their sneaky colleagues joining intelligence.
These are the people we entrust with fighting crime and complex financial crimes, including web-based crimes. Small wonder each year, the bright sparks of Bryanston and the general north of Johannesburg complain about crime and nothing seems to change with each passing year. When police are called on to do a simple drill, it seems so complex, so mind-boggling. When they are supposed to land in a parachute – not in a war situation but in front of people waiting to clap hands in awe – reading the wind direction and knowing what to do to avoid the pole is a task unfathomable.
As a nation, our security at an event like Mandela’s burial where Obama, a terrorist who was about to kill Osama bin Laden to some, is in attendance, is left to chance because of sloppy vetting of people who are providing some services – even if that service is sign language interpretation.
In the past, for one to be an officer of the law one needed to be physically strong. In the warped thinking of yonder, policing was a physical activity divorced from critical thinking skills. This explains why police statements are unreadable. They are written by people trained to run after criminals rather than to write clearly. In the world we live in today, we need officers who are not merely able to correctly capture statements of victims, but who are analytical, open-minded and possess problem-solving capabilities. If you can’t do a simple drill, how then do you solve complex crimes?
When we look back at the comedic episodes of Maponya’s funeral and other gaffes, it is clear why crime in our country remains high. We understand clearly why the bright sparks in Bryanston will build high security walls with electric fences and alarms rather than help deal with the problem at its source: we must stop allowing those matriculants with 30% passes into our security departments. The concomitant response to high entry levels is rewarding those entrusted with our safety handsomely.
If we don’t, we must accept that the best among us like Maponya will be insulted through drills gone wrong and other stories. Our public view as palookas in the community of nations will be entrenched. And we will laugh our lungs out. But, if you think about who Maponya and Mandela are, you will realise it’s really a shame. A big shame.
