The Democratic Alliance (DA) has asked the Northern Cape Provincial Commissioner, Lieutenant General Koliswa Otola, to ensure that an outdated instruction issued to police officers in the province, to only take down statements of victims of crime in English, be withdrawn and rectified with immediate effect.
According to Census 2022, Afrikaans is the first language of about 54% of the Northern Cape population, Setswana of 35,7% and English of just 2,4% of the population. The directive, which effectively blocks victims from reporting crimes in their mother tongue, and turns police officers into translators, is therefore absurd.
It also doesn’t make sense as to why SAPS, who previously faced a legal battle regarding a similarly controversial language instruction issued in the Northern Cape in 2016, would want to take us down this road again.
The revived language order is a complete violation of victims’ rights and will aggravate crime by deterring victims from reporting crime and by weakening criminal cases, robbing victims of a chance at justice.
The DA will fight for the rights of all victims of crime, including Afrikaans and Setswana speakers who visit SAPS stations across the Northern Cape to report crimes. We have contacted Otola, who today conceded that a faulty directive was issued by the Deputy Provincial Commissioner. We have asked her to urgently repeal it and ensure that correct communication goes out to all SAPS structures before anyone’s rights are violated.
The DA will pose questions about the recurring issues in relation to SAPS’s language policy and poor internal communications, in parliament.
SAPS must uphold a functional level of multilingualism in the province to ensure that the rights of victims of crime are protected, victims are treated with dignity and all criminal cases stand a fair chance at successful prosecution and conviction.