Johannesburg - AfriForum’s private prosecution division has written a letter to the country’s national police commissioner, General Fannie Masemola, complaining about the slow pace at which the police have dealt with allegations of paedophilia against University of Cape Town law professor Pierre de Vos.
A few weeks ago, AfriForum opened a case against De Vos after the highly respected constitutional law expert published a graphic pornographic video on Twitter showing a small Chinese boy being molested by an adult male.
De Vos apologised for the tweet and claimed his account had been hacked. He also dismissed calls by AfriForum for him to be punished for the video, which he said he was not responsible for.
But AfriForum said it would not let the matter go until De Vos faced the full might of the law.
AfriForum said the case had been moved from one police station to the next and no investigator had been assigned to the case. The group had to rope in Advocate Gerrie Nel to ensure the police followed up on the matter.
In the letter to Masemola, Nel described the actions of the police as deplorable and lethargic.
"This deplorable and lethargic response to a complaint is not unknown to the citizens the SAPS are entrusted to serve. Therefore, whilst not difficult to believe, we stand aghast at the keenness of the national police service and its management to focus on administrative ‘case registration’ whilst abandoning the core constitutional obligations of investigating crimes reported to the SAPS," said Nel.
The letter was written in a scathing tone and said AfriForum had an interest in ensuring that justice was served for all South Africans.
"We submit that we are now confronted with either selective investigation or downright incompetence by the SAPS in the bungling of our client’s complaint and refusal to investigate the identified suspect, Mr Pierre de Vos," said Nel.
He said the organisation’s private prosecution unit had sent the letter to the police during the week of a presidential summit on gender-based violence.
AfriForum said that, after launching a formal complaint, one of its members, Rene van der Vyver, had received news that the case was now back at the police station where it had been opened and that an investigator had now been assigned to the matter.
"Coincident with our complaint, Van der Vyver received another computer-generated SMS indicating that the case had gone full circle and was back at the Humewood police station and that an investigator had now been appointed," Nel said.
De Vos said AfriForum was on a mission to tarnish his name because of the criticism he meted out to the organisation during its litigation with the EFF over the singing of the Kiss the Boer song.
Police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said she would revert to The Star with a comment.
The Star