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The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the suspension of National Police Commissioner General Fannie Masemola and the appointment of an Acting National Commissioner, Lt-Gen Puleng Dimpane.

This is a necessary step to protect the integrity of the office and to ensure that SAPS can continue to function while due process takes its course.

The DA has previously called for a board of inquiry into General Masemola’s fitness to hold office, and reiterates that call now. Suspension alone is not enough.

These serious allegations require full and proper scrutiny so that accountability is not delayed, diluted or quietly avoided.
But this also lays bare the deeply alarming state of SAPS senior management. South Africans now face the extraordinary reality that the Minister of Police, the National Commissioner, and a Deputy National Commissioner have all been suspended or placed on leave.

This is not a sign of a healthy police service.

It is a sign of an institution in profound crisis at the highest level.

At a time when violent crime, gang activity, extortion and organised criminal networks are terrorising communities across the country, public confidence in SAPS leadership has been badly damaged.

South Africans cannot be expected to trust a police service when scandal, suspension and allegations of corruption have become defining features of its senior command.

The DA has consistently maintained that accountability must be applied without fear or favour.

Due process must be respected, but where the credibility of the office is compromised, precautionary suspension is the responsible course.

No police leader can be allowed to remain in position if their continued presence undermines trust in the institution they are meant to lead.

What South Africa is seeing now is the consequence of years of weak leadership, blurred accountability and a failure to clean out compromised networks inside SAPS.

The current government lurches from scandal to scandal and from suspension to suspension, while ordinary South Africans are left less safe and less free.

A DA-led government would move decisively to restore integrity at the top of SAPS through proper vetting, lifestyle audits, real consequence management and appointments based on competence, integrity and public trust.

We would remove the criminals inside SAPS so that honest police officers can remove the criminals terrorising South Africans on the streets. And we would rebuild public confidence through clean leadership, stable command and a police service focused on protecting citizens rather than protecting compromised insiders.

The President has a constitutional duty to ensure that the police service functions effectively. That duty now requires more than another temporary fix. It requires decisive action to restore stability, credibility and integrity to one of the most important institutions in the Republic.