Let me start by saying Mthokozisi Ntumba's name. It is his senseless murder at the hands of the South African Police Service (SAPS) this past week that has caused much pain and provoked outrage throughout the country, while reviving an important national conversation about the appalling state of public order policing in SA today.
Some pundits have protested against news reports that have attempted to round out Ntumba's life and his personal story by making reference to the fact that he was a married father of four; that he was a recent master's degree graduate; that he was a public servant who worked for the Tshwane municipality as a human settlements planner; and that he was shot as he returned from a visit to the doctor.
I, too, am wary of the impulse to ascribe value to a human life only on the basis that it belonged to someone who embodied a series of uniquely middle-class traits and values - his job and education and parenthood are not the only things that made Ntumba's life valuable.
He mattered because he lived. And these are some of the elements of the life he lived; these are the people whom his murder has left bereft and grieving. We should take a moment to think of them too.
Video footage of the moments before and after Ntumba's shooting are utterly harrowing and beggar belief. Why did the police arrive at the Wits University fees and financial exclusion protests totally on edge, trigger fingers ready to open fire upon the first students to cross them?
Why, in October last year, were they able to react without resorting to violence when gunshots were fired inside the Senekal magistrate's court and a police van was overturned by protesters during the white farmers' march in the Free State, while students were fired upon up and down the Wits University campus during the protests there on Wednesday?
How different - materially - is the SAPS today from the highly militarised apartheid-era police force which it replaced, and what will it take to finally instil a culture of community-centred, non-discriminatory, human rights-based policing throughout this critical organ of the civil service?
The killing of Ntumba once again raises serious questions about the government's commitment and capacity to transform the police service 27 years after the fall of apartheid.
The killing of [Mthokozisi] Ntumba once again raises serious questions about the government's commitment and capacity to transform the police service 27 years after the fall of apartheid
The Farlam commission investigating the massacre of 34 mineworkers during the Lonmin strike at Marikana in 2012 highlighted some of the vast deficiencies in SA's public order policing, including the excessive use of force and the deployment of officers armed with automatic weapons in situations that they were specifically tasked with de-escalating.
In addition, mixed messages from the government in recent years with respect to the mandate of the police have jeopardised efforts at demilitarisation.
From the public injunctions by former cabinet ministers to "shoot to kill" and "shoot the bastards", to the continued use of a militaristic, apartheid-era ranking system within the SAPS which is not unlike that of the South African National Defence Force - all have made it all the more difficult to shift the culture within the SAPS to one of citizen-centred and community-based policing.
Numerous studies, including those cited by the National Planning Commission, have also found that the remilitarisation of the South African police has done nothing to garner greater respect for police officers in the communities they serve. Neither has it improved arrest and conviction rates within the criminal justice system.
All that this backsliding has achieved is an increase in mistrust between the police and the people they serve, and the tragic, avoidable deaths of more and more people at the hands of those tasked with protecting them.
Chapter 12 of the National Development Plan envisages that by 2030 SA will have a police service that is "well-resourced and professional, staffed by highly skilled officers who value their work, serve the community, safeguard lives and property without discrimination, protect the peaceful against violence, and respect the rights to equality and justice".
The tragic events of this past week demonstrate that, as a police service of just more than 200,000 officers whose history is founded upon oppression and the enforcement of violence against black people, the SAPS has a very long way to go before it can achieve this very valid but still lofty goal.
Crime in SA is very often a response to poverty, inequality and deprivation - all phenomena that are on the rise in a country that is in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As the economy buckles under the weight of repeated lockdowns, more people will face the desperation of unemployment, hunger, and homelessness.
As the ground is laid for more public protests, an increase in crimes of need and an uptick in gender-based violence and child abuse, our police service must be better equipped and capable of thinking and reacting differently when faced with the challenges of serving and protecting vulnerable communities in peril.
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