Equality Court: Police distribution in Western Cape is discriminatory

The case was brought by the Social Justice Coalition, Equal Education and the Nyanga Community Policing Forum.

The coalition’s general-secretary Axolile Notywala says the judgment has been a long time coming.

"This goes back to the days of the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry which had made recommendations about police in Khayelitsha, but recommendations that would have been very useful for the country as well.

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"One of those recommendations was that the issue of police services must be reviewed because it does discriminate and the recommendation at the time went as far as calling it apartheid, saying that the way it is distributed it is similar to the how they distributed during apartheid."

He says they are hoping the police won't appeal the judgment and will rather find ways to remedy the situation.

"In two occasions where we've been against SAPS they've appealed and they've lost both occasions at the constitutional court. They wasted a lot of money instead of trying to make sure that they deal with the issues that people are bringing forward."

Notywala says a remedy for the problem will be decided at a later stage by the courts.

"This particular judgement was just declaring what we had wanted them to declare; that there is discrimination on the bases of race and poverty, but part of that was that we wanted the police to do something about that. At a national level SAPS needs to review the system used to allocate police."

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