This is coming to the KWA.

Officers cry racism

Anelia Blackie

“White police officers have a better chance of winning the lotto than to be promoted to higher ranks in the SAPS.”

White police officers lashed out against the SAPS’s apparent slackness in promoting them after their recent applications for promotion have been turned down.

These applications followed positions advertised internally by the SAPS and although they believe they fitted the criteria, they also feel they were turned down at the last minute because they were white.

“We were interviewed and short-listed for the positions advertised but when the final decision had to be made by the Commissioner of Police, these positions were scrapped and are to be re-advertised again. This happens time and again until there are enough black applicants to fill the advertised positions.

“I have been turned down ten times for a promotion in the past seven years while many black colleagues have been promoted after only two years,” says a police officer who now feels so demoralised that he is on the brink of resigning from the SAPS.

“That is exactly what they want us to do. White officers are not welcome in the SAPS anymore and they want us to leave whether we can do the job or not,” says another desperate officer.

According to these police officers, although they recognise that many of their black colleagues show high competency in their work, there are however many who are ‘incompetent and inexperienced’.

“It is most demoralising and frustrating to constantly guide an incompetent supervisor in his job or to train someone in a higher rank and watch as he gets promoted.

“I have much respect for superiors in a higher rank but in many instances not for an incompetent person placed in that rank.

“Our stress not merely stems from dealing with brutally murdered victims and their families but mainly because the system is failing us.

“Many white police officers take stress leave because they are tired of the internal problems and demoralising circumstances they are finding themselves in.

“In the end it is not only we who suffer but the community as a whole as well. We do not care anymore,” says a police officer.

According to these officers only 48 out of a total of 371 Gauteng officers who were recently promoted, were white.

Director Selby Bokaba, national spokesperson for the SAPS, says these officers’ allegations are ‘utter nonsense’.

“Although we have to meet equity targets set by the Department of Labour, officers are firstly promoted on the basis of performance.”

http://www.rekord.co.za/story.aspx?lan=Afr&sid=12091