Thank you Programme Director,

POPCRU President, Mr Zizamele Cebekhulu

The General  Secretary of  POPCRU, Mr Jeffrey Dladla

The entire Executive Leadership of POPCRU

The Director General of Transport, Advocate James Mlawu

Government Employee Pension Fund representative

Road Traffic Management Cooperation representative

Members of POPCRU

Members of the SAPS

POPCRU stakeholders

Labour Union organisations representatives in attendance

Distinguished guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

Good day!

I would like to start by thanking you for inviting me in my capacity as the National Commissioner of the South African Police Service (SAPS) to partake in the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) 10th National Congress.

I am delighted to be here, even better to be afforded an opportunity to speak at an event as important as this one. To take part in a gathering of this nature is not only a great pleasure but I hope it also serve as reassurance of our willingness to continue to work with POPRCU in the best interest of our common stakeholders.

I stand before you to wish the leadership of POPCRU a cordial and a successful congress. I hope the discussions in the past few days have been fruitful. I also stand to once again pledge our support as the SAPS management. We feel morally obliged to support you because we would like to see your organisation thrive to ensure our members’ best interest are always considered and catered for.

We appreciate the commitment of POPCRU President, Mr Cebekhulu and the entire Executive Leadership of POPCRU to provide labour representation service for our members by ensuring enforcement of compliance with Labour Legislation and collective agreements, attending to union member’s complaints and grievances, representation of union members in disciplinary and arbitration hearings, and provision of legal opinions to the union members.

Since its establishment in the year 1989, POPCRU has been providing labour representation service for our members. For over three decades now, you have been working to develop close working relationship between us and our members amid our determined and shared quest to create a safe and secure environment for all people within the borders of South Africa.

Therefore, I can say without a shred of a doubt that one thing we, the management of the SAPS, share in common with yourselves, POPCRU Leadership, is that we both care about our members’ welfare.

We have to, and should do all we can to protect the welfare of all our Human resources, the same human resource that you represent.

I am, as the National Commissioner of the SAPS, very passionate about boosting staff morale in the organization that I lead. And I have observed that whilst their moral is not at its peak, it has improved in the past few years. We can do more to appreciate and acknowledge hard working members. We already do so via the various Provincial and National Excellence Awards that we host annually. Our reward system makes it clear that we must reward SAPS employees for their excellent performance and recognizing long service as well when members who improve their qualifications.

The relationship between the Employer and Labour at the Safety and Security Sectoral Bargaining Council (SSSBC) still has room for improvement. There are a number of agenda items that are long outstanding. I have directed my management team to look into improving the relationship with labour, both at national and provincial level.

This will cover the provisioning of adequate resources, particularly at frontline level because our police stations are our communities’ window to policing.

I have also specifically directed my Human Resource Management Division, to work closely with parties at the bargaining council to down manage the agenda items that have been standing long on the agenda of the SSSBC, including but not limited to the SAPS promotion policy, and where adjustments have to be made, we will make them, and we are busy with that process so that it benefits every deserving person in the organization.

We recently released over 2068 post promotions.

When I took office, I made a commitment that one of my immediate priorities would be to focus on the well-being of our members. This is work in progress, but with POPCRU as one of the SAPS’ key stakeholders, we need to collaborate and join efforts in ensuring that we achieve this outcome. I can safely say we are moving closer to achieving that and whilst there is still challenges, we are moving in a synchronized way to ensure that our policing imperatives are achieved, while taking care of our members welfare into consideration.

It is common knowledge that we have received a letter from treasury, where we were requested to down manage expenses and impose more stringent cost containment measures. This includes budget cuts which may affect our policing as well as our Human Resources priorities that are planned for the current financial year, which are linked to our priorities.

We have done our best to ensure that these cost containment measures imposed on us by cabinet, does not greatly affect our policing imperatives and we rely heavily on command and control from all spheres of the SAPS. To put it frankly, the SAPS cannot afford budget cuts, in any form and shape because criminals are becoming more brazen and innovative every day. Cutting budgets affects our operational plans and our response and approach to fighting crime.

Due to the economic outlook of the country, National Treasury has introduced in-year budget reductions. Adjusted Estimate allocation letter from National Treasury dated 12 October 2023 has been received and had an  increase in allocation for Compensation of employees with an amount of  R4,000 billion, as well as  a baseline reduction  of R  662 million

This means that for SAPS, R5, 556 billion was required for implementation of the 2023 PSCBC agreement, while only R4 billion was allocated. Operational funding also needs to be reduced with R662 million. Therefore, R5, 556 billion was expected, but ±R2, 218 billion less received.

Police cannot afford these baseline reductions essentially when considering the extent to which previous reductions which has impacted on the ability of SAPS to perform its functions on an acceptable level. Less personnel numbers over a multi-year period will have serious implications for the Department and the police/population ratio.  In view of the increased RSA population figure, an increased demand in policing is required.

These reductions to the SAPS budget will result in reductions in the SAPS fixed establishment, which will impact on the ability of the SAPS to carry out its mandate. This has a negative impact on the image of the department in that communities then loose trust in us, and equally so, lack of Police visibility may lead to communities feeling unsafe, with unintended consequences where, for example, communities begin to mobilize themselves by taking the law into their own hands.

The welfare of SAPS members is vital for us to fulfil our Constitutional mandate as stipulated in Section 205 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. We remain committed to carrying out Section 205 mandate to prevent, combat and investigate crime; to maintain public order; to protect and secure the inhabitants of South Africa and their property; and to uphold and enforce the law.

We cannot implement any of this without our valuable members.

I am equally aware that many of your members pay the ultimate price while serving the country and for that we are eternally grateful for the sacrifices that your members have done and continue to do.

As the SAPS management, we are concerned about the killing of our police officers which is alarmingly high and to that end, we will strengthen our efforts to curb police killings through our Police Safety Strategy. An attack on one police officer is an attack on the authority of the state and we must deal with the attacks harshly. I can never remain silent on the issue of police safety. Criminals of today have declared war on the police as well as the security cluster as a whole, not only through criminality but also through their incessant attacks on our members and on our police stations. This is an area that needs everyone’s priority attention as we work on ensuring the well-being of our members.

We have put measures in place for continued and regular training of all our operational members on the ground, to ensure that they are operationally ready.

We continuously remind our members of the legislative framework contained in Section 49 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which empowers them to act using reasonable and proportional force in the circumstance, as and when they are under attack.

We are also working towards increasing the death grant which has remained the same for far too long. Once it gets implemented, it will see the lowest ranking members’ death grants increasing to R300 000, for junior members Level 1 -7.

Level 8 – 10 will increase to R275 000,

Level 12 upwards will remain the same for now at R250 000.

These increases will be implemented at a date to be determined by the Ministry of Police in the not so distant future.

We appreciate that for the longest of time, our junior members have been at the forefront of crime fighting, they are our foot soldiers, yet we have not been taking good care of their families welfare in the way that we should have. We want to correct that. This is a good start.

When I addressed one of your conferences last year, I made a commitment that I will, during my tenure, be zooming into the effectiveness of the mental and physical wellness programmes that our members are currently exposed to; the level of training provided through our Human Resource Division (HRD); Human Resource Management (HRM) programmes to reward outstanding performance – both monetary rewards and career progression; as well as exposing our members to technology and other innovations that will bolster our crime fighting capacity.

Employee Health and Wellness remains a priority for the SAPS.

We want to always find innovative ways to demonstrate our willingness to assist our employees beyond paying them a salary. We are intentional and serious about it. That seriousness, in the interest of Employee Health and Wellness, must be able to assist our members to be mentally, psychologically, physically and emotionally stable, to be able to be better police men and women, given the stressful work they do.

One of the core principles of government’s EHW Strategic framework is modelled around collaborative partnerships which are ideally built on mutual strength and help innovative services for the public service and communities.

As many of you may be aware, last week we witnessed a historic moment which culminated in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Cooperation in the provision of services between the SAPS, Virgin Active, and Planet Fitness- the two largest fitness outfits in the country. This partnership demonstrates our commitment to supporting our employees by creating a positive work environment. I also hope that this will contribute to employee satisfaction, productivity, and overall well-being. A fit and healthy body can lead to a productive mind.

This was a long time coming, and Yes- we should have done it a long time ago.

It was against this background that Virgin Active and Planet Fitness are now our strategic partners in the fight against crime this agreement will see all Police Act and Public Service Act members of the SAPS receive 20% discount on their monthly gym membership fees and other benefits.

I know that the footprint that both these clubs cover, is vast, and this will go a long way in making sure that our employees enjoy your facilities. I am equally alive to the reality that we didn’t cover the population of SAPS in its entirety, because many of our members are serving communities in remote areas, where those gyms don’t have a presence- but this is good start for us.

To this end, the management of the SAPS has already begun with measures to address this shortcoming.

As a start, I have already instructed all Provincial Commissioners to identify at least 3 rural police stations in their respective provinces, and build outdoor gyms in the current financial year, for members who are deployed in those far flung stations.

This process is already underway. The stations have been identified, the site inspections conducted, and we are now busy with procurement of the outdoor gym equipment. We anticipate that this will be rolled out in all rural stations in the next few years. That’s our target.

We are doing this because we understand that fitness is not just for the elite few and because we are serious about getting every employee of the SAPS fit and healthy, in all corners where we operate.

I applaud you, President Cebekhulu, for your continued leadership to ensure that POPCRU members, in particular SAPS members receive necessary representation if and when it becomes necessary.

We know that we can never have enough police officers to police the population of this country in the ratio that is comfortable. But we have made headway in trying to recruit, train and retain talent and capacity that will assist us in achieving our mandate. That is why, in just over a month from now, we will be passing out another batch of trainees of our special recruitment drive dubbed “Project 10000”. We are very excited about that.

While we continue to put more boots on the ground, it is worth mentioning that a sizeable percentage of these Project 10 000 trainees, were made up of academic graduates with qualifications in different fields such as Forensic Science, Criminology, Policing, Law, and various other fields.

These will greatly assist us in ensuring that we fulfil out investigative mandate as well as crime prevention capacity. This, ladies and gentlemen, will without a doubt, also take us a long way in professionalising the Service and boosting public confidence in the police. This will ultimately also boost the efficacy levels of the SAPS as a lead player in the Criminal Justice System.

Programme Director, Ladies and Gentlemen, as I conclude, I would like to point out that we appreciate the cordial relationship we enjoy with POPCRU Leadership and every opportunity to improve our relations. We appreciate the mediator role you play in the best interest of our members. You have been playing this role for over the past twenty-three (23) years and we acknowledge your contribution.

As you already know, my door is always open for the leadership of POPCRU to discuss pertinent issues that affect the organization and its members- Your members.

We look forward to the impact of this interactive platform and pledge our continued support to the new leadership of POPCRU that will be elected here.

I also wish to extend my hand to the elected leadership for a meet and greet session as soon as diaries permit, to strengthen our healthy and progressive relationship, and regular engagements, in the best interest of our members.

I wish you all the best with your congress.

Thank you!