Mental toll on police force

South Africans recently commemorated the lives of police officers who died in the line of duty — men and women who stood between chaos and order.

- KEKELETSO NAKELI

South Africans recently commemorated the lives of police officers who died in the line of duty — men and women who stood between chaos and order. Yet, even as we honoured their sacrifice at the Union Buildings on Sunday, headlines told a darker story: a police officer arrested for involvement in cash-in-transit heists and another in Mamelodi, east of Pretoria, who held his family hostage before taking two lives, including his own.

These tragedies are not isolated. They are symptoms of a deeper malaise within our law enforcement system — one that demands urgent attention.

When the men and women in blue, our supposed line of defence, hold us ransom, where do we run?