BOKSBURG, South Africa (AP) — One of South Africa's highest-ranking police officers on Thursday faced charges of plotting with other cops to murder a rival in a love triangle, and then covering up the crime for more than a decade.
The case of Richard Mdluli, who denies the charges,
is just one in series of scandals involving the police in South Africa where
high rates of murder, rape and other crimes are national crises. Questions
about possible criminals within the force are now further undermining morale in
the ranks and confidence among the public.
Middle- and upper-class South Africans have long
turned to private security companies, some staffed by former police officers. And
poor South Africans have resorted to vigilante violence.
"I think people have come to be very cynical
about police," said John Kane-Berman, chief executive of the South African
Institute of Race Relations. "Because they've seen corruption. Because they've
seen incompetence. There are repeated reports of police violence, brutality.
There are also reports of the political factionalism being played out in the
police force."
Mdluli, who was seeking bail at Thursday's hearing,
serves as the police lieutenant general who briefs the president on security
threats to the nation. But prosecutors allege he threatened a man for a year
"to stay away from his girlfriend," according to court records.
That man was shot and killed in 1999, and Mdluli is
now charged with murder. He is also accused of destroying the coroner's report
and other records to avoid prosecution.
Mdluli turned himself in last week days after a
warrant for his arrest was issued. Court records show an investigation was
reopened last year into the killing.
Last year, former national police chief Jackie
Selebi was convicted of taking money and gifts from a confessed drug smuggler
and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. And earlier this year, a government
watchdog found that Selebi's successor, Bheki Cele, acted unlawfully in making
a deal to lease police offices from a prominent businessman though no criminal
charges have been filed.
Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa says the cases
should each be seen as isolated. "Let's not generalize," he told reporters
recently.
But Andrew Faull, whose book "Behind the
Badge" chronicles the lives of South African police officers, says he sees
a troubling pattern. South Africa newspaper reports bear Faull out with stories
every week or so about cops on the beat charged with robberies, rapes, murders
and corruption.
The police force "needs to have a leadership
that's beyond reproach," said Faull, who also volunteers as a police
reservist, spending a few days a month in uniform patrolling the streets of his
neighborhood.
Under apartheid that ended in 1994, black officers
were barred from supervising whites. Critics say the process of reforming the
force has created tensions and distrust, and that too often civilians with
political ties have been given top jobs instead of promoting from within police
ranks.
Both Cele and Selebi were key politicians within
the now-governing African National Congress but head teaching backgrounds with
military training.
"We do need to depoliticize the police,"
Faull said. "There are too many questions about leadership in the South
African Police."
The nation's highest court has also weighed in on
the question of politics and police. Asked to review a 2008 move by the ANC to
abolish an independent crime-busting team known as the Scorpions, the
Constitutional Court said the police unit that replaced it was
"insufficiently insulated from political influence."
The court said Cabinet ministers were too involved
in setting investigators' priorities and determining the unit's leadership.
The battle over the Scorpions was seen as pitting
one ANC faction against another.
Kane-Berman, whose South African Institute of Race
Relations has for decades chronicled the country's ills and tried to encourage
debate about solutions, said problems within the police had a political
solution.
"The accountability comes from the
politicians, who must hold the police accountable. And the citizens must hold
the politicians accountable," he said. "If the citizens want to take
active steps, they have to use their votes."
Associated Press writer Ed Brown contributed to
this report from Johannesburg.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Chris Collingridge-STAR-Independent Newspapers Limited South Africa)
