By Nco Dube | 14 August 2026

South Africans are exhausted. Exhausted by violent crime. Exhausted by CIT gangs who turn highways into battlegrounds. Exhausted by taxi hitmen who treat life as a negotiable asset. In this climate, when the police kill a suspected violent criminal, the public does not recoil. It exhales. Relief replaces scrutiny. Trauma replaces due process. That reaction is understandable, but it sits at the centre of a constitutional dilemma we can no longer ignore.

The lived experience of crime in this country is intimate. Almost every household has buried someone, been robbed, or survived an attack. People know the sound of gunfire. They know the language of fear. They know the weight of insecurity. So when a Task Team in KwaZulu Natal kills a man allegedly linked to CIT robberies, the public does not ask whether he was armed or whether he shot first. It does not ask whether he was even linked to the docket. Instead, the public says: “Good. One less problem.” This is not cruelty. It is fatigue. But fatigue is a dangerous foundation for public morality, especially in a constitutional democracy where the state’s power to take life must be justified, not assumed.

This is why the latest testimony before the Madlanga Commission should stop the country cold. IPID’s Len John revealed that 149 people have died in 77 KZN Task Team operations, with zero convictions. Some of those deaths were justified. Some suspects were heavily armed and posed immediate threats. But some were not. Some were innocent. Some were unarmed. Some died in raids where every occupant was killed, leaving only police officers as witnesses. And the public barely blinked. That silence is not an endorsement of impunity. It is a symptom of fear. But fear cannot be allowed to rewrite constitutional limits.

To understand why this moment matters, we must confront a truth that South Africans often avoid. The problem is not new. It is not an ANC problem. It is not a democratic government problem. It is a policing culture problem, and that culture is older than the Republic itself. At its inception, the South African Police was not a neutral law enforcement body. It was an arm of the state designed to enforce racial domination. It worked alongside the military, the judiciary and the legislature to subdue and silence millions of people. Torture was not an aberration. Extrajudicial killing was not a scandal. It was the job.

That culture did not evaporate in 1994. It carried over. It adapted. It survived.

The SAP had hit squads that supplied weapons and intelligence to certain political factions. They kidnapped, tortured and killed. Eugene de Kock’s Vlakplaas was not fiction. It was a state project. 

His infamous and murderous C1 unit did not operate in the shadows. It operated with authorisation. When democracy arrived, the uniforms changed, the insignia changed, the language changed, but the deeper culture did not. It simply found new corners to inhabit.

In the democratic era, we saw the Cato Manor Organised Crime Unit. They were accused of killing suspects and allegedly working with taxi associations. Their operations followed a familiar choreography. Late night raids. Suspects killed without witnesses. Questionable linkages to crimes in some cases. Senior officers hovering over scenes. Now some police task teams in KZN are alleged to be repeating the pattern. And the public, traumatised by crime, is applauding the sequel.

The case of Mr Thabiso Ngcobo shows how this culture operates today. He was driving his armoured vehicle when members of a KZN Task Team opened fire on him with rifles. There was no evidence that he shot at the police. There were no allegations that he pointed a firearm at them. He survived only because his vehicle was armoured. That armour gave him a chance to call the provincial commissioner, who advised him to drive to a shopping mall. Senior police officials and private security met him there. The officers involved have been criminally charged and suspended. 

Yet Ngcobo has not been charged with any crime. If he was a wanted suspect, one would expect charges. If he posed an immediate threat, one would expect evidence. Instead, we have a man who survived a hail of bullets and walked away without a single allegation against him. His survival exposes a truth that statistics cannot capture. Some people die because they cannot call a commissioner. Some die because their cars are not armoured. Some die because the culture of lethal force has become instinctive.

This is how policing drifts from enforcement into elimination. This is how democratic norms erode without public resistance. This is how a culture born in the SAP finds new life in the SAPS.

Yet we must hold another truth alongside this one. Police officers are dying too. South Africa is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to wear a badge. CIT gangs carry AK 47s and explosives. Taxi hitmen operate like paramilitary units. Officers are ambushed, assassinated and targeted. No one expects police to die with their guns holstered. No one expects them to negotiate with men carrying R5s. No one expects them to wait to be shot at first. The Constitution protects police life as fiercely as it protects suspect rights.

But danger does not erase constitutional limits. Fear does not suspend due process. Public relief does not legitimise extrajudicial killing. The real danger is not force. It is habit. High risk units develop muscle memory. After enough raids, enough gunfire and enough funerals, the line between necessary force and lethal convenience begins to blur. 

Arrest becomes a weakness. Due process becomes tedious. A suspect becomes a target. A raid becomes a purge. This is how policing becomes counter insurgency. This is how democracy becomes performance. This is how constitutional rights become optional.

The public’s support for these killings is understandable, but it is also perilous. When communities cheer a fatal shooting, they create political cover for units that may already be drifting beyond constitutional boundaries. The applause becomes a shield. It becomes a justification. It becomes a reason for commanders to tolerate patterns that should alarm them. And it becomes a reason for politicians to avoid asking hard questions. Public fear becomes a substitute for public oversight. That is how democracies lose their grip on the monopoly of legitimate force.

This is why the constitutional framework is crucial. Section 11 protects the right to life. Section 12 protects the right to freedom and security of the person. Section 35 protects the right to due process. These protections were written to prevent the return of a policing culture where the state decides who lives and who dies. They were written to bury the logic of apartheid security policing. They were written to ensure that the democratic state never again becomes comfortable with killing.

Yet the allegations in KwaZulu Natal, the constitutional promise is being tested by a policing reality that looks increasingly like a parallel system. Specialised units operate in the shadows. They kill suspects in clusters. They walk away without justification for the killings or consequences. The numbers are not abstract. They are a warning. They tell us that a culture we thought we buried in 1994 is still alive, still evolving and still shaping how force is used and justified.

The balance we must defend is simple. Policing must be tough, fast and decisive. It must also be accountable, constitutional and evidence driven. The public’s fear cannot become the state’s licence to kill. South Africa needs independent crime scene reconstruction, mandatory body worn cameras, specialised prosecutors for police killings, rotation of high risk units and public reporting of every fatal operation. These are not anti-police reforms. They are pro-democracy safeguards.

South Africans may cheer when violent suspects are killed. Their fear makes it understandable. Their trauma makes it human. But the Constitution demands something harder. It demands that the state justify every death it causes, even when the public approves. If we allow relief to replace scrutiny and fear to replace due process, we will not only lose control of policing. We will lose control of the democratic project itself.