Minister of Mobility
- What procedures are currently in place to ensure that traffic law enforcement officers do not engage in (a) corruption or (b) bribery;
- whether he is aware of any officers who have been found guilty of corruption or bribery; if so, (a) what are the relevant details and (b) what actions have been taken against them?
- Corruption and or Bribery is taken extremely seriously by my department and more importantly by our traffic officers due to the nature of the service we render to our citizens, which is based on trust.
As part of the trainee traffic officer curriculum, they undergo specific training to sensitize incumbent officers of the associated risks of these actions and includes collaboration with the Department of Public Prosecution when this module is facilitated. In 2018 approval was granted by the department for Dr Elise Englebrecht to conduct a research project, after it was reported in the media that 35 motorists were arrested for offering our officers bribes, to determine what motivated the individuals to rather report the acts of bribery than accepting them. This was unnatural taking the contrary high numbers of bribery and corruption that was reported by members in other law enforcement agencies. Based on her feedback it had a lot to do with the values of the department, the training they received as well as officers’ commitment to the traffic officers’ pledge when they graduated. As part of this ongoing scourge to address unscrupulous motorists’ intention to bribe our officers, we made the following number of arrests.
Financial Year | Number of bribery & Inducing authorized officers to act in conflict with his/her duty’ |
April 2020-March 2021 | 42 |
April 2021-March 2022 | 77 |
April 2022-March 2023 | 93 |
We have also created various platforms as listed below to report if an officer does solicit a bribe while performing their daily duties.
- https://wwwwesterncape.gov.za/general-publication/learn-where-and-how-lay-complaint
- General complaint – 086 142 142
- Anonymous Hotline – 0800 701 701
- At present we have zero cases of corruption or bribery that were reported to our department or where our officers were found guilty after investigation by the SAPS.
