The police have had the main responsibility for suppressing resistance under the successive States of Emergency since 1985, despite the use of tens of thousands of soldiers. Police activity has become increasingly irregular and uncohesive, and morale has declined. Mutinies and public protests by black police, coupled with revelations about police assassination squads, and conflicting government approaches to the enforcement of emergency restrictions have created further tensions.
Police forces
The regular South African Police (SAP) currently has a strength of about 64,000, and can call on a further 57,000 reservists. There are also auxiliary forces, notably Municipal Police, Special Constables and bantustan forces. Despite high turnover, some 20,000 new police have been recruited since 1985 — mainly into auxiliary units. All SAP members are trained in Counter-Insurgency and Riot Control and during the States of Emergency have been equipped with armoured vehicles and automatic weapons, and the police and army have functioned as integrated units.
In October 1989 plans were disclosed for further massive increases in the police force, with the aim of almost doubling SAP strength to 110,000 in the next ten years. Ten thousand new police will need to be recruited every year, and numbers will also be increased by the transfer of National Service conscripts, 4,000 of whom will be transferred to the police in 1990. The 19 police divisions will be reorganised into 11 regions — presumably the same as the 11 SA Defence Force regional commands.
The SAP is also expanding its auxiliary forces. Special Constables known as kitskonstabels ('instant police'), armed with shotguns after a mere six weeks training, have been posted in black townships since recruitment began in 1986. A 9,000-strong force of Municipal Police has been established since 1984 under the nominal control of Black Local Authorities. The municipal force was transferred to SAP command on 1 October 1989. Police authorities indicated that they would be retrained and integrated into the SAP.
Tensions within the ranks
Municipal Police units in Soweto, Kageso, Vosloosrus and Katlehong have gone on strike over the past four years, and in December 1987 the SAP forcefully put down a mutiny by Lekoa Municipal Police. There have also been mutinies amongst the Special Constables, who like the Municipal Police are paid far less than the regular police and are subjected to racist abuse by white police.
The SAP's problems amongst black police — who make up half the regular SAP — were underlined by the defiance of Lt. Gregory ROCKMAN, who publicly labelled the SAP Riot Squad 'mad dogs' following election night killings in the Western Cape on 5 September. Rockman and 40 other black police officers and warrant officers met with the Minister of Law and Order shortly afterwards to present their grievances.
In November Rockman set up the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, 'to protect the basic human rights of its members ... and all the people they come into contact with'. At its first public demonstration, on 13 November, Rockman and 20 others were arrested and charged under the Internal Security Act. He was also suspended from the police and charged under disciplinary procedures.
Police violence
Despite the stated commitment of the government to allow peaceful protest, police continued to actively suppress peaceful resistance in October and November. Although the police did not, for example, intervene in the marches in some urban centres or in the rally marking the release of Walter Sisulu and other long-term political prisoners, police attacks on gatherings were reported from many parts of the country.
Heavily-armed police sealed off and forcibly stopped a mass women's protest in Pretoria at the end of September, beating, whipping and attacking demonstrators as well as passers-by. At Richmond in Natal, police violently broke up a peaceful demonstration by 800 schoolchildren, firing teargas and shooting dead a 16-year-old schoolgirl, Ntokozo NGCOBO. Armed police also fired on striking railway workers on at least three occasions during November, killing two strikers. Police violence was also reported in the Transkei and Ciskei bantustans.
DETENTIONS
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and interrogated, was receiving death threats from an organisation named Tshitangu Tsha Philamisevhe. The organisation was established to combat resistance in the bantustan, and teachers and students were being pressurised by the authorities into joining it.
Resistance to incorporation
On 19 October a 'State of Emergency' was declared in the Ciskei bantustan, in the areas of Peelton and Belasi where about 5,000 people live. Approximately 100 people had reportedly been detained or injured by the bantustan police in the days before the emergency, when violence against residents escalated.
Children were among those detained. One of the demands of the residents was that all students detained during school exams be released and allowed to write missed papers. One 12-year-old described being stripped and beaten by bantustan police while in detention in Zwelitsha, before he was released without charge.
The detention of two members of the Commercial Catering & Allied Workers Union (CCAWUSA) in Bisho, in the bantustan, during the first weekend of November, was believed by their union to be in response to trade union support for the Peelton community.
