Lack of intelligence reports before July unrest 'was shortcoming not failure' - Sitole
National police commissioner Kehla Sitole has labelled the lack of a comprehensive intelligence report prior to the July unrest as a "shortcoming".
The violence and looting in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal lead to the deaths of more than 300 people.
Sitole returned to the South African Human Rights Commission’s probe into the unrest on Tuesday.
While he admitted the country was embarrassed under his watch, he denied any suggestion that he failed at his job.
“It was not a gross dereliction of duty. Here I have explained that it was a shortcoming of intelligence,” said Sitole.
He told the commission that the shortcomings were caused by lack of resources in crime intelligence and the police services.
“It’s capacity and resourcing. This does not lie with SAPS, they could not pick up any rise of the unrest modus operandi,” said Sithole.
Sitole said he had engaged Treasury on more than 10 occasions since he was appointed in 2017 to discuss the lack of resources.
On allegations that police were nowhere to be found and were deliberately not assisting with the looting and violence, Sitole vehemently disagreed, stating police were on the ground and were able to prevent looting in some hotspots.
“The looting was taking place mostly at the malls and if I give you mall stats, by 2010 we had 1600, currently we have 2300 and we were not enough to cover all the malls at the same time to cover the sporadic demand. We needed the defense compliment."
The SANDF was only deployed on 14 July, according to KZN police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.
He said this was at the tail end of the unrest.
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