Attacks on police threaten security

We will wake up one morning to an uprising and question why did it go about without being detected.

Attacking the police's crime intelligence division threatens the country's security, the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans' Association said on Monday.

"The various allegations levelled at the leadership of crime intelligence division... and the clear turf battles seeming to be raging... is a threat to the security, peace and stability of our country," MKMVA chairman Kebby Maphatsoe told reporters in Johannesburg.

He said generals and colonels who served in the apartheid-era security intelligence had retired at the dawn of democracy and established private intelligence institutions.

"These are trained people.... Those generals are paraded as experts on crime fighting and have the audacity to regularly bash the SA Police Service, especially its crime intelligence division."

He said civil society had been against the establishment of a crime intelligence unit, and was intent on discrediting the police.

He singled out former crime intelligence head Richard Mdluli as an example of this.

"Civil society has been against him returning to perform his duty as a policeman. It is dangerous. We will wake up one morning to an uprising and question why did it go about without being detected.