Cape Town – Police Minister Bheki Cele says they are training thousands of members of the Visible Policing unit to deal with crowd management.
He said additional recruits will be sent to the Public Order Policing to also tackle the issue of crowd management after the unrest last year.
President Cyril Ramaphosa had announced that they will hire 12 000 people to join the SAPS this year.
The first group of police recruits began their training on April 1.
Cele had also said a few weeks ago that most of the 12 000 recruits will go to the various units of the police, including the Public Order Policing, the Special Task Force and Tactical Response Unit and others.
After the July unrest the police were slammed in reports of the expert panel that found they were unable to contain the situation.
In a written reply to a question from the EFF in parliament, Cele said that following the expert panel report, they were now training more officers to deal with crowd management.
“The South African Police Service is implementing the recommendations of the expert panel, including the training of more than 10 000 Visible Policing members at police stations, in first responder crowd management training. Additional members will be allocated to the POP capability for the capacitation of the POP units, by means of the current recruitment process,” said Cele.
On whether he will resign from his position, Cele said he served at the behest of the president.
It was the prerogative of Ramaphosa to hire and fire ministers.
