Pretoria - In the aftermath of a strike by workers at one of the country’s largest banana producers nearly 16 years ago, during which the farm was damaged and a worker seriously injured – while the police did nothing – the court said the SAPS could not simply sit back with its arms folded.
“When a crime is imminent and foreseen, it is expected of the police to take action, and they are duty bound to maintain law and order including when called to attend to a strike,” the court said.
The Minister of Police turned to the Supreme Court of Appeal to challenge an earlier order that the SAPS was liable for the multi-millions in damages suffered by the owners of Umbhaba Estates in Mpumalanga.
Besides for the farm’s damages, the SAPS was also earlier ordered to pay damages towards a non-striking farmworker, who was stabbed with a broken bottle by a protester.
The high court earlier said some of the police officers in Hazyview called to control striking workers at the farm, displayed a “don’t care attitude” in the midst of the violence which saw not only a worker injured, but non-striking people being intimidated, and farm buildings and equipment trashed.
The police, in turning to the appeal court, said the finding was wrong, as it did all it could to assist.
But according to evidence, the police did nothing until the very end of the strike when things reached boiling point at the farm. This was in spite of three orders which were obtained at the time by the farm owners, in which the workers were interdicted from striking and the police were ordered to arrest those who transgressed.
The farm owners and management said they repeatedly called the SAPS for help and even went to the local police station during the strike which lasted from July 5 to 24 in 2007.
The problems started when new owners took over the Kiepersol farm, one of three in the Umbhaba group.
They instituted a new rule workers had to work on Saturdays.
Unhappy with this, about 300 workers went on strike. The owners heard of the strike a few days before it happened, and informed the police.
Farm manager Dean Plath and a director of Umbhaba, testified that on the first day of the strike a group of disgruntled workers blocked the entrance to the farm and hurled stones at the main building where workers were supposed to pack bananas. They also wielded sticks and intimidated non-striking workers.
After he had phoned the police station numerous times, two junior officials came to the farm and told them to work it out with the union.
Plath said although some of the strikers were violent and he almost got hit with a brick, the police did nothing and eventually left.
Things became more violent as the days went by and video footage taken by the farm management showed how one of the security guards was hit with a stone in the face. Yet the police still did not maintain law and order.
The case of the police was that they took adequate steps to prevent the violence during the strike.
Appeal Judge Mahube Molemela said the SAPS never argued as a defence that they did not have enough resources to attend to the strike. They also did not dispute that they had a legal duty to maintain public order.
“It is clear that the steps taken by the police fell far short of the steps that reasonable police officers would have taken to comply with the court orders that were issued by the Labour Court, and in general compliance with the constitutional imperatives set out in the Constitution.”
“By the time the police took decisive action, the proverbial horses had already bolted…”
Pretoria News