Cape Town - At the height of the violence that gripped South Africa in 2020 and 2021, the police ministry failed to recruit a single trainee to join the service as 11178 cops left the service between 2020 and 2022, MPs heard.
Furthermore, the police are in the fourth phase of their investigation into corruption in the processes to appoint some cops in the new cohort of 10 000.
The police top brass revealed this in their appearance before the police committee, where they accounted for corruption allegations on recruitment and training process, conditions of training facilities and capacity of training staff/trainers, among other issues.
Major-General Lenny Govender told MPs that “there was no intake of new police trainees that were recruited” due to Covid-19.
The SAPS also hobbled on despite a mass exodus of 11 178 cops between 2020 and 2022, a separate cohort of 2 825 members who left when Treasury introduced the early-retirement-without-penalisation initiative, and the 2020 budget cuts.
Govender said that as a result, SAPS’s staff complement nosedived from 187 358 in 2020 to 182 126 in 2021 and 176 180 in 2022.
To play catch-up, the SAPS has enlisted 10 358 new police officers for 2022/23. Of these new entrants, 555 – including 257 BSc graduates – will complete their training in June.
Treasury would commit 15000 new cops, as previously stated by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana.
Govender said that in order to train 10 000 more cops, the SAPS would need 940 trainers. The SAPS currently has 257 trainers.
He said there was an intervention seeking to re-employ former cops to plug the training officer gap.
Though he said some of the training academies were in “good” or “fair” condition, Govender also told MPs there were plans for new recruits to be trained in Correctional Services, SA National Defence Force and other departments’ facilities.
Another senior SAPS official presented a report on the investigation on allegations of corruption in the 2022 process to appoint the 10 000 recruits.
She said the final fourth phase of the investigation was ongoing and focused on 5 567 recruits. The official said SAPS’ recruitment process was done manually and vulnerable to abuse.
A few suspects were arrested on charges relating to attempted bribery and some were denied bail.
DA MP Okkie Terblanche said: “This is a horrifying revelation of just how far behind the police have fallen in their attempts to tackle crime.”
A Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) official recommended to MPs that the SAPS should adopt a far more stringent screening process for all personnel, including senior managers.
The Popcru official said the unions were “gravely concerned” that the recruitment process continued to be mired in controversy. He said the recent trainees were subject to poor conditions in the training academies, with no hot water.