MEMBERS of the South African Police (SAP) in the apartheid era had ranks, and generals in particular seemed to take them sinfully seriously.

This gave them some weird powers and enabled them to decide the fate of the helpless individuals.

I was reminded of this when National Police Commissioner Bheki “Shoot to kill” Cele made the fearsome pronouncement that the South African Police Service would return to military style ranks. It set my mind racing back to the malicious performances of some SAP generals of the apartheid era.

During the period of oppression in this country many of these police generals unilaterally chose to do things not by the book, but by their own wicked ways. They brutally crushed by any means at their disposal any opposition advocating some change to the status quo and the generals went to sleep peacefully at night as if nothing barbarous had taken place.

This announcement by Cele coincided with my reading Alan Elsdon’s book, The Tall Assassin: The Darkest Political Murders of the old South Africa, in which one of the most feared general who could wield such unlimited powers was alleged to have been Gen “Lang” Hendrik van den Bergh. He was implicated in many political murders, such as the 1967 Rietbok air disaster near East London.

During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings several police generals testified.

There was Gen Nic van Rensberg, who ordered the head of the apartheid government’s death farm Vlakplaas, Eugene “Prime Evil” de Kock, to “make a plan” to silence three security policemen, Warrant Officer Glen Mgoduka, Sgt Amos Faku and Sgt Desmond Mpipa, as well as an alleged informer, Xolile Sakati, who threatened to expose the involvement of their white colleagues in the barbarous killings of the Cradock Four – Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlauli in 1985. That order resulted in the 1989 Motherwell car bombing.

Former police commissioner Gen Johan van der Merwe admitted he ordered the December 19, 1985, cross-border raid into Lesotho, which left eight ANC members and three Lesotho nationals dead. Among them was Nomkhosi Mini, the daughter of former trade unionist and Umkhonto weSizwe co- founder Vuyisile Mini.

He was one of the first three ANC members, the others being Zinakile Mkaba and Wilson Khayinga, to be executed by apartheid South Africa in the Pretoria Central Prison on November 6, 1964. Their remains were exhumed and reburied in 1998 at the Emlotheni Memorial Park in New Brighton, which has become one of our honoured heritage sites.

Yes, ranks and power do corrupt and I had a tinge of fear when I listened to Cele say: “It will not be a distant future when you will be speaking to ‘general’ rather than ‘commissioner’”. We are told this will form part of a broader move to change the police from a “service” to a “force”, as it was during the dreaded apartheid era before 1994.

My fear is no one can tell what will happen, especially when the “shoot to kill” order seems to have sent wrong signals to our police. They have allegedly shot at unarmed civilians, some suspected of being hijackers, prompting the Independent Complaints Directorate to launch an investigation.

I hope the government will closely examine this planned process of having a police “force”, define its duties so as to avoid ministers being forced to apologise after the fact to families of victims of mindless police shootings or finding ourselves back in the apartheid era when anti-apartheid activists or those deemed to be undesirable mysteriously disappeared or were murdered in places like Vlakplaas or Post Chalmers, near Cradock.

LAST month, October, always brings back sad memories of the morning of that Black Wednesday, October 19, 1977, when as Port Elizabeth’s Weekend World and The World bureau chief I, together with staffers Wilberforce Mdoda and Glory Cossie, found ourselves suddenly jobless. Justice Minister Jimmy “leaves me cold” Kruger had decreed to ban the papers.

I learnt about our joblessness in a strange way at about 5am that day while still in bed.

Current Eastern Cape Judge President Cecil Somyalo, then a partner in the Kondile and Somyalo law firm in New Brighton, phoned me to break the news.

They were told by the security police, led by Col Pieter Goosen, who were conducting a search of Barney Pityana’s office. Pityana was serving a banning order and was articled to the firm.

I hope this will never happen in our new South Africa.