Sharp rise in number of people shot dead by KZN cops is cause for serious concern

Police officers whose lives are endangered have the right to respond appropriately to protect themselves. But this does not justify the random killing of civilians who may or may not have been correctly identified as criminal suspects by one or other police officer.

The sharp rise over the past two years in the number of “criminal suspects” shot and killed by the police in KwaZulu-Natal should raise serious concerns among law-abiding citizens about the seemingly trigger-happy approach to policing adopted by the SA Police Service in KZN.

Last week, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Police Commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi confirmed that KZN police had shot and killed at least 40 alleged criminal suspects in shootouts since the beginning of April 2024 alone.

Instead of being concerned about these numbers, a sizeable portion of the public appears to support (and even cheer on) what they interpret as the adoption of a shoot-to-kill policy by the police.

Many supporters of the shoot-to-kill approach strangely assume, first, that all the victims killed by the police were indeed dangerous criminals, as alleged by the police, and, second, that they therefore deserved to be killed, even without having been convicted and sentenced after receiving a fair trial.

Large sections of the public also seem to accept at face value claims made by the police after each new incident that those “suspects” killed had first opened fire on the police and that officers had therefore acted in self-defence, or at least had used reasonable force as permitted by section 49 of the Criminal Procedure Act when they killed the suspect.

Emotive issue

That these views about police killings are widely held by citizens is not particularly surprising. Given the unacceptably high levels of violent crime in South Africa and the inability of the police to deal with it decisively, it has understandably become a highly emotive issue.

In this context, the (unofficial) adoption of an aggressive shoot-to-kill policy by the police might look like a good thing: citizens might think the police are finally fighting back against the violent thugs who terrorise our communities; at last, they are doing something to make us all feel safer.

This is not a view I share.

While the police may well have been justified to shoot and kill some of these suspects in self-defence, there is currently little evidence publicly available about who the suspects were and what crimes they were accused of having committed; what evidence the police had to conclude that these suspects were dangerous criminals; whether claims by the police that the suspects had opened fire on the police were true or false, or whether the arrest of the suspects might comfortably have been secured peacefully.

It is astonishing that so many citizens accept that all the claims (most of them not substantiated by any evidence) made by the police to justify the killing of the 40 suspects over the past four months are true.

I am willing to assume that at least some of the claims are true. I am also aware that the various incidents in KZN are currently being investigated by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) and assume that Ipid will make some attempt at testing the various claims being made by the police to justify the killings.

I am not sure Ipid has the political will or the resources to uncover the full truth in all these cases. It is, in any event, more difficult to uncover any cover-ups in cases like these where a close-knit team of elite police officers are likely to corroborate each other’s stories, even when the story is not entirely true.

Wrongful arrests, police brutality

But we know from excellent reporting by GroundUp that the police tend to protect their own, and that in the overwhelming number of cases where Ipid does uncover police wrongdoing, no disciplinary action is taken.

A more sceptical attitude about claims made by the police to justify the killing of suspects is also warranted by other objective evidence that illustrates the systemic problem within the SAPS. We know, for example, that wrongful arrest is a problem, which is why, between 2018 and 2023, the SAPS paid more than R2.2-billion in claims for compensation for wrongful arrests. This amounts to about 2% of the total police budget each year.

Moreover, last year the Auditor-General reported that the SAPS is facing civil claims of more than R108-billionfor various alleged offences, including police brutality and wrongful arrests.

These statistics almost certainly only tell part of the story, as a disproportionate number of the victims and families of the victims of wrongful arrest, police brutality, assault and even wrongful killing are poor and black and thus less likely to have the financial and social resources to enable them to lodge legal claims against the SAPS. (This is also why I would argue that any formal or informal policy encouraging members of the SAPS to shoot first and ask questions later is a fundamentally anti-black/anti-poor policy. It is not as if a move towards a more trigger-happy police service is going to lead to the killing of many wealthy white people.)

But these statistics also fail to convey the full and often devastating impact of these cases on the victims and the families of the victims involved. We do sometimes read about the wrongful arrest or wrongful shooting of an innocent person when that person is well known (the wrongful shooting of rapper Khuli Chana in a case of mistaken identity is one example) or when a case is deemed newsworthy because of the privileged class or race of the victim, or because there was a political angle to the story.

Worse to come?

But because the overwhelming majority of the victims of police misconduct lack the economic, social or political power to turn the problem into a pressing political cause, and because the adoption of a tough “law and order” approach to policing has become a pressing political cause, I worry that the recent spike in the killing of criminal “suspects” by the police in KZN is a harbinger of worse things to come.

When citizens demand that the police shoot first and ask questions later in order to instil fear in the hearts of violent “criminals”, not only criminals but also ordinary citizens may end up fearing the police.

To get a more nuanced sense of what could go wrong, I recently searched for judgments on the website of theSouthern African Legal Information Institute dealing with claims for damages for unlawful shootings by police. I mention only a couple of examples that illustrate why it is not unreasonable to scrutinise self-exculpatory claims made by police officers who had been involved in the killing of individuals they claim were violent criminals.

Kagiso Rabothata

Consider the 2021 case of Kagiso Rabothata (Rabothata v Minister of Police), who was shot and then arrested by the police after they wrongly identified him as the suspect who had been involved in a car hijacking at Winterveldt 13km away. Rabothata was carrying a plastic bag with a pair of shoes he had earlier collected from the shoemaker, as well as bottles of beer he was sharing with his friend. The officer who shot him falsely claimed that Rabothata had pointed a firearm at him and had threatened his life.

Based on the evidence discussed in the judgment, it is difficult to comprehend how anyone, let alone a police officer, could have believed that Rabothata posed a threat to him. A properly trained police officer would never have done so.

The case serves as a reminder that a shoot-to-kill attitude within a police force poses a greater risk to innocent members of the public when the members of that police force are badly trained and when discipline within that force is not properly maintained.

Bhekisisa Dobela

The case of Bhekisisa Dobela (Dobela and Another v Minister of Police) brought by his relatives against the police after he was shot and killed by a member of the SAPS raises even more worrying questions. On the day of the shooting, officers had gone to Dobela’s house at a late hour, “kicked the door”, and entered the house, to which Dobela objected “vociferously”. An argument naturally ensued, before one of the officers shot and killed Dobela.

Once again, the police officer claimed that Dobela had picked up a bush knife and then a shield and had then advanced on the officer threatening his life, and that the shots were thus fired in self-defence. The court did not accept this explanation, not least because the evidence showed that the bullet had entered Dobela’s body from his left side, which means that he was not facing the policeman directly when he was shot.

The officer had thus shot an unarmed man in that man’s own house after the victim had expressed anger at the intrusion by the police. The lesson I take from this case is that it could be mortally dangerous for an ordinary citizen to argue with an armed police officer.

Lebogang Matshira

Then there is the 2016 case of Lebogang Matshira (Matshira v Minister of Safety and Security) who was travelling “as a passenger in a vehicle on Mabopane Highway (R80). A member of the SAPS in a police vehicle with flashing blue lights approached their vehicle from behind. The driver of Ms Matshira’s vehicle pulled over. The police vehicle pulled up next to their vehicle and [a police officer] armed with an automatic R5 rifle opened fire on the occupants”.

Matshira was taken to Kalafong Hospital and admitted to the ICU, later undergoing emergency surgery. She remained under police guard and cuffed to the hospital bed for eight days. On her discharge from hospital, she was taken to Soshanguve Police Station where she was detained for a night before appearing in court the next day where she was granted bail. The case against her was eventually dismissed.

What makes this case particularly alarming is that no justification was offered by the police officer for this seemingly random attack on an innocent civilian – the state conceded liability when Matshira sued for damages.

Why, I wonder, did the police officer randomly shoot someone with an automatic weapon? Did he believe there would be no consequences for his actions? Given the presence of the automatic rifle, was he part of an elite police unit (such as the one operating in KZN) and did this make him believe he was above the law?

And last, if some police officers believe they are entitled to shoot non-violent civilians (without any justification) in the middle of the day on a busy highway, what do they believe they are entitled to do when they go out to arrest individuals suspected of involvement in violent crime or a gang?

Impossible task

It is important to note that police officers in South Africa have a close-to-impossible task to do. Most officers have not been trained well enough to equip them fully for their jobs. It is also a job that is often dangerous, extremely stressful and seldom well paid (except at the most senior level).

Police officers whose lives are endangered have the right to respond appropriately to protect themselves, which means that the killing of criminal suspects would often be lawful.

But this does not justify the random killing of civilians who may or may not have been correctly identified as criminal suspects by one or other police officer.

The fact that a large section of the public – desperate for good news about the fight against crime – is blindly cheering on such killings without knowing whether they were justified is worrying, to say the least.

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