Ramaphosa defends police and SANDF in Covid-19 crackdown
Reports of abuse of power and violence, with eight reported dead, are allegations without ‘specificities’, the president says
President Cyril Ramaphosa has defended the conduct of the 18,000 police and SA National Defence Force (SANDF) personnel enforcing the government’s Covid-19 shutdown regulations — and maintains that he has “no specific knowledge” of law enforcement officials behaving unconstitutionally.
While stressing that he does not take the allegations of police and defence force “abuse of power” — made in an urgent court application in the Pretoria high court by the Fair and Equitable Society (FES) NGO — “lightly”, the president said its application “simply alleges abuse without any specificities”. He described the FES’s case as “misconceived”. ..
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