Tag: SAPS

Oh no! Not again!

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Ugh. This sort of thing is ALWAYS happening…

(But I have a feline you’re going to like this one.)

Big news in from Meyerton – or should I say “Meowerton”? lol (I shouldn’t) – in Gauteng this morning, where some suspects have escaped from police custody by shapeshifting into cats.

Wait. What?

Hey. Don’t knock it. This was an excellent choice of animal to shapeshift into: quick, agile, and – crucially – small enough to get through the bars which would have detained them when they were in human form. These are sensible criminals, not like the ones involved in that embarrassing “the suspects shapeshifted into hippos” incident in Limpopo earlier this year.

Pfft. Amateurs.

The suspects, brothers Omari and Ali Mustafa, were among 11 suspects who were arrested for possession of hijacked good.

Ah yes, hijacked good. The now higher overall bad ratio being why this country continues to struggle.
No-one ever hijacks poor or terrible or even mediocre. Just think of what a great place the world would be if those things were stolen and taken away from us.
But no, it’s always good that gets nicked.

Omari has since been rearrested, while his brother remains on the run.

I note here, with some concern, the lack of detail as to whether Omari was in cat or human form when he was rearrested. And yes, of course it matters. Are you taking a whole police van and some handcuffs or just a crate, a tin of Lucky Star pilchards and someone going “pspspspspsps!” to the arrest scene?

But I digress. Often.
How did this whole thing transpire? If only there was a witness statement.

Gosh!

When it was a turn to charge this other [two] suspects, known as Mustafa Ali and Omari Mustafa, their names were called but they couldn’t be found. Among those suspects, there is a suspect known as Erick Tumbulu – who informed the police that he saw when these two suspects made a strange like owl bird noise, turned into cats and they escaped while the gate was still locked.

There’s the line-up, here’s the pitch:

“He said that you made an owl noise.”
“Who?”

Thank you very much. I’m here all week. Try the veal.

But anyway. Back to Meyerton:

The officer who wrote the statement said that on his arrival, he personally – together with Warrant Officer Maloka – went to the cells to take a headcount.

Standard. I’m now left wondering why any further investigation needs to happen here.

11 suspects in cell. Owl bird noise. Two suspects turn into cats and leave. 9 suspects left in cell.

Case closed as far as I can see. Pub. A quick Black Label and home before the footy.

But wait…

Because a senior police officer has had their say on the matter (don’t they always [rolls eyes]). On condition of anonymity, of course. And that’s probably not because their view might get them into trouble with their employers. It’s probably because they said this:

It was very suspicious that the suspects waited to arrive at the police holding cells before they could turn into cats.

OK. You’d know the usual practice here better than me.

That’s if they even became cats, because I that suspect someone was paid for their unlawful release. 

OMG WTF BBQ!!!

You mean… this whole “they turned into cats” thing was just an elaborate ruse to throw us off the scent of what might actually have happened here?

Huge if true.

Why would Erick have said that they turned into cats? And what about the owl bird noise? Was that bit real? I did a whole joke on that.

I’ve reviewed several (or more) very dull legal documents and I’m still not even sure that escape from custody by shapeshifting into a cat is even against the law. It’s certainly not directly mentioned anywhere that I could see.

What precautions have they taken to ensure that Omari doesn’t shapeshift into a cat to try and escape again? Plastic fencing over the prison bars? Lavender and pepper sprayed around the exits? Or simply a guy on guard with a laser pointer to distract him as he tries to leave the custody suite?

I do hope that lessons have been learned.

Never change, South Africa.

On fake twitter accounts

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I love local political press releases. And this one from the new police minister is particularly good.

Of course, Bheki Cele’s predecessor was hugely active on twitter. Sadly, he was more active in twitter than at doing his actual job. Happily, he’s now not doing his actual job anymore. Lovely.
But will our new minister be busy on the social medias? No chance – if you’ve seen an tweet from him, IT’S FAKE!

The Minister wishes to state categorically clear that any Twitter account or any social media account operating in his name is Fake and that no one is authorized to operate any social media account in his name.

See?

But wait, there’s more:

The mushrooming Twitter handles in the name of the Minister are viewed as sinister and are aimed at dragging the name of Minister Cele in all dirty and tricky mud games in the social media space for reasons best known to the ghost operators.

I actually only go onto Twitter to engage in all dirty and tricky mud games in the social media space. The rest of it is rubbish.

Social media remains a respectable communication platform that should be exempted from any abuse by ghost operators.

Ok. I’m in agreement here. Ghost operators should stick to operating ghosts. That’s definitely what they’re best at. Not abusing respectable communication platforms. No-one needs that. And what happens to all the unoperated ghosts while all this abuse is going on?

A frankly terrible situation.

This is a typically robust, ridiculously nonsensical start from Cele, and I can’t wait for what’s coming next.

Crime: sorted

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Incoming: Great news from SAPS (The South African Police Service)!

After a weekend which will inevitably be filled with murder, rape, burglary and violence across South Africa, all will be sorted from 10am on Monday, when the police service hold their prayer day. Yippee!

According to the media release:

 The prayer will among other things focus on the following:

  • Safety for police officers
  • Reduction of crime in general
  • Reduction of gender-based violence

But will it work? Well, apparently, yes it will, because they tell us that:

A collective prayer has the power to protect and save police officers and preserve the nation. Police officials are responsible for protecting the community and our prayers can help save our police officials from harm.

It does make you wonder why, given the power that a collective prayer obviously possesses, no-one has come up with this idea before. Why waste time with community intervention, detective work and shooting miners when we could all come together, say a few words and kill all those birds with one stone, thus finding ourselves all leaving in a harmonious utopia?

Except, they have tried this before: last year:

The SAPS’s National Prayer Day is at the SAPS’s Tshwane Training Academy in Pretoria West from 10:00 to 12:30 on Tuesday, 13 August 2013. Employees of the South African Police Service are encouraged to attend this worthy event. It is through the divine intervention of the Almighty that we stay protected and reach our goal in the fight against crime.

Yep – the divine intervention of the Almighty will sort everything out, starting at 10am on the 13th August.
So, how did that work out for them, then? Well, here are a few lines from a synopsis of the crime stats released last week:

  • For the first time in 20 years the number of murders and the murder rate has increased for a second consecutive year.
  • This means that there were 809 more people murdered than in the previous year.
  • There has been an increase in all categories of robbery over the past year.
  • Vehicle hijacking increased by 12.3% to 11,221 incidents. This means that 31 motor vehicles were hijacked every day on average in 2013/14.

Oops. And, tragically:

Between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2014 a total 68 police officers were killed in the line of duty.

So, one has to ask where this confidence in the power of the prayer “to protect and save police officers and preserve the nation” has come from?
Perhaps, like the big guy upstairs that their prayers are aimed at, it’s all just made up.

The media is cordially invited to attend the prayer service.

No thanks.

When R4,000 isn’t R4,000

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Until we actually have hard facts instead of supposition and rumour, I’m steering well clear of the whole Lonmin/Marikana issue. However, if like me, you’re searching for those hard facts, it seems that the mainstream media isn’t the place to be looking.
There’s a surprise.

Whichever side you’re on, you surely can’t help but feel some pity for the rock drillers who – as we’ve been told here, here, here, here and here – earn just R4,000 per month. How one can survive, let alone support a family, on that amount is beyond me.

Except that Politicsweb has now alleged that the oft quoted R4,000 per month figure is actually some distance from the true amount earned by the Marikana rock drillers:

It was left, not to a journalist, but to Solidarity deputy general secretary Gideon du Plessis to go and find out the actual figures. In a statement issued on Monday he reported “The adjusted total cost package of a Lonmin rock drill operator is approximately R10 500 a month, excluding bonuses.”

In response to a separate query from Politicsweb Lonmin’s Mark Munroe Executive Vice President of Mining, basically confirmed these amounts. He stated: “Lonmin’s Rock Drill Operators earn in the region of R10,000 per month without bonuses and over R11,000 including bonuses. These levels are in line with those of our competitors and are before the wage hike of some 9% which will come into effect on 1 October 2012.”

If this increase applies to the whole compensation package it would push gross earnings – with and without bonuses – to between R11 000 and R12 000 per month. The net income of rock drill operators may well be considerably less than this – after deductions – but this is the cost to company.

If these figures are correct, it makes it even more bewildering, bizarre and tragic that so many lives were lost in search of what amounts to a R500 per month increase.

As the Politicsweb piece states:

One has to ask why no-one in the world’s media appear seem to have bothered to verify the R4 000 figure… Given the critical nature of this information for any analysis of the strikers demands it seems like a very basic mistake.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s news24.com seems to have evidence (via Al-Jazeera) that police were indeed fired upon before opening fire upon the protestors. The video is worth a watch.

I’ll leave the decisions as to whether R10,000 per month plus bonuses is an acceptable wage or whether the two shots apparently fired at police merited their response up to you. But wouldn’t it be nice if the journalists paid to report facts, actually reported facts?