Geez. The life of a police spokesperson, I tell you. I thought I was getting a cushy desk job. I should have known better when I was the only one to stick up my hand when they asked for volunteers. Now I sit here taking the heat for everyone else’s f***-ups on a daily basis.

I mean, look at this office. It hasn’t seen paint in decades, let alone years. And you call this furniture? I had better furniture in my previous post at the Isipingo charge office. Heights, not Rail, just in case you were wondering.

Look at the idiots I have to cover for every day. Take those VIP Protection guys, for example. What a bunch of pain-in-the-ass jokers. They swan around in Porsche Cayennes. BMW X5s. Toyota Camrys. Taking politicians – politicians, for flip’s sakes! – to their meetings. I mean, who died and made them God? Can’t they just leave on time for their meetings like everyone else?

And then one of those halfwit cowboys goes and shoots out a tyre of someone who doesn’t get out of the way. Who does he think he is? Charles F Bronson? No wonder the public wants to moer these okes. And who’s the Kippie who has to spin a fat fairy story to the media about having more tolerance for the blue light convoys? Me! I mean, I can still hear the howls of derisive laughter from here. Everybody knows that the convoys are a total joke and a waste of taxpayers’ money. But no, I have to pretend they are upstanding citizens doing an honest day’s work. Give me a break.

In fact, pass me a spliff. I need something to ease the pain. I think I’m getting a bladdy ulcer here, while my bosses lurk in their larney offices saying nothing. They’re okay. They’re not the ones looking like a poephol 24/7. I’m telling you, they don’t pay me enough for this shit.

Now I’ve got those flipping rottweilers from the media all over me like a cheap suit about that deranged military-style police raid on Andrew Phillips’ club. I mean, here you’ve got your standard titty club. They operate all over the show. And frankly, I don’t give a hoot. We’ve got far bigger things to worry about than a few horny middle-aged men who want to get their rocks off looking at a bunch of middle-eastern chicks with saggy boobs.

But no, some wise-ass up the SAPS hierarchy gets pissed off that the court kicks Phillips’ previous case out of court. So he arranges a f**** commando-style raid on the place. How insane is that? The drug dealers are turning the streets into their own personal flea-market, but we’ve got time for platoons of cops to descend on a strip club dressed in riot gear, beat the crap out of the patrons and arrest nobody. Not one person. Find nothing. Not a single gram of coke. Not an illegal alien in sight. Nada. SFA.

Now get this. All this happens three days after the owner gets acquitted on charges of running a brothel. And I have to tell the media that it was just a perfectly normal crime prevention operation – you know, the kind that happens every day. What a crock. A crime prevention operation is when our gullible reservists put on their uniforms and feel important while they stop cars on Beyers Naude Drive. This, my friends, is loony police state behaviour. And I have to try and pretend it’s normal. And everyone knows I am talking unadulterated, arrant horse manure.

So what do you want me to tell you? That the SA Police Service is a law unto itself? That it’s riddled with corruption? That we acknowledge we’re losing the confidence of the people? That we should fire everybody and start all over again? Are you mad? I breathe a word of this, and I’ll be manning the charge office in Musina before you can say Jackie Seleb …

Author

  • Peter van der Merwe is a communications consultant, writer, inveterate media junkie and a keen student of people and how they see the world. He spends too much time feeding the belly of the corporate beast and too little time sitting in coffee shops, watching the world go by.

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Peter van der Merwe

Peter van der Merwe is a communications consultant, writer, inveterate media junkie and a keen student of people and how they see the world. He spends too much time feeding the belly of the corporate beast...

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