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Celebrating the good work of the South African Police Service (SAPS), and boosting the morale of officers, must be a central part of the Department of Police’s strategy to combat crime and corruption in South Africa. Motivation plays a critical role in improving the performance of members of the police, just as it does in any business or organisation, and in the Police Service there is the added rider that officers routinely place their lives on the line to defend us, which means that we have a duty to do everything in our power to ensure that their work is honoured, and their successes commemorated.

It is disappointing, then, to note that instead of commemorating individual officers in provincial and regional Police Day functions, the Department of Police once again appears set to bus in tens of thousands of officers for a National Police Day. Last year, 50 000 police officers were ordered to attend a function in Bloemfontein, with many officers complaining that the event had been uninspiring and a waste of their time. The event cost an estimated R70-million, although Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa has repeatedly refused to answer parliamentary questions that I put to him on the matter. Numerous national newspapers carried reports about how the event had degenerated into a complete farce. There was an array of entertainment provided, including at least five big-name South African musicians, plus gala dinners for the top structure, while the transport arrangements were chaotic, the food ran out, and no ablution facilities were provided for the SAPS members it was supposed to be aimed at.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) understands from sources inside the police that 30 000 officers will be bussed in to a national function at the Orlando Stadium in Johannesburg on Friday 28 January 2011. This means that one in five uniformed officers will be removed from our streets to attend an event that, if last year is anything to go by, will do very little to boost morale or improve the well-being of our officers.

Last year’s event appeared to have been designed to do little more than placate the egos of the police commissioner and police minister. We need a National Police Day programme that celebrates our police officers, not the heavily protected politicians whose lives are never on the line to protect our citizens. This can be achieved by holding regional and provincial celebrations on Police Day – the sort of programme that would carry the added benefits of not costing tens of millions of rands, nor leaving our police stations severely depleted of officers for days on end.

This sort of expenditure needs to be understood in the context of, for example, record backlogs in our forensic science laboratories, record numbers of lost and stolen case dockets and record delays in our 10111 call centres.

We will therefore once again request that the Police Minister reveals all the information about the nature of last year’s event, and the reasons for the multiple planning failures, and we will ask him for the details of the cost of both this year’s event, and last year’s one. It would be unfortunate were we to see a repeat of last year’s farce. National Police Day has the potential to play a highly constructive role in improving the well-being of our police, but the concept of a single, multi-million rand annual event is clearly a self-indulgence to appease the egos of these two men.