Leadership is failing our hard-working police officers

There is no polite way to say this but the South African Police Service, in my opinion, is in shambles.

- Bongani Mdakane

For a force that guzzles billions of rands in taxpayers' money and brags about high-level operations at press briefings, the SAPS has become an embarrassment. Worse, it has become a threat to the very citizens it is meant to protect.

It has become a bloated, broken and poorly coordinated mess that keeps dropping the ball - and then going on to act as if people are wrong for asking why.

The case of the three Free State constables who vanished and later turned up dead in a river is not just another tragic story.

It is a flashing red signal. It is a gut punch that leaves the country winded. It is a damning indictment of a police force that has long since lost control of the basics: protect, investigate and act.

Constables Cebekhulu Linda, Keamogetswe Buys and Boipelo Senoge young, fresh out of training, full of promise - were sent from Bloemfontein to Limpopo as part of Operation Vala Umgodi, a task force targeting illegal mining.

Let us not mince words: that operation is a war zone. Any fool on the street knows that za-ma zamas (illegal miners) are armed, organised and deadly.

These are not small-time hustlers they are foot soldiers in syndicates with no mercy.