Viewfinder’s Police Accountability Tracker is an interface to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate's (IPID) database of more than 47,000 complaints registered against the police between April 2012 and March 2020. Users can use the filters to home in on any police station for an overview of cases registered there. Users can also locate any individual case for a "progress report", as at March 2020. The data demonstrates that police officers implicated in violent crimes routinely escape accountability.
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A “massive reading campaign” for South African schools announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2019 has never got off the ground, despite triumphant claims in Parliament by the Department of Basic Education (DBE). Viewfinder and GroundUp can reveal that the Department’s National Reading Plan – which it had not made publicly available – is a
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An international literacy study has confirmed that 81% of South Africa’s Grade 4 children could not read for meaning in any language in 2021, almost exactly the same proportion as in 2011. This means that a decade of slow progress in reading has been wiped out. The child literacy rate observed by the Progress on International
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Teaching children to read is fundamental to their future success. But for a country already battling massive youth unemployment and an adult literacy crisis, it’s emerged that close to 80% of Grade 4 learners cannot read with understanding in any of the 11 official languages. Government has warned of the crisis and, in 2019, President
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The South African Police Service (SAPS) has found Athlone station commander Colonel Mark Adonis guilty of misconduct for failing to act on torture and murder allegations against officers on his staff. He was given a “verbal warning”, according to former police commissioner General Khehla Sitole, who was responding to a parliamentary question. A conviction of
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Police brutality – including allegations of torture – has been exposed in several Carte Blanche exposés in recent months. Now, a police insider breaks through the ‘blue wall of silence’, detailing the habitual brutality and non-accountability at their police station. “It takes someone that is evil to do what was done that night”, the whistle-blower
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In January 2020, the army and police barged into Wasiela Isaacs’ family home in Athlone on the Cape Flats and arrested her son, Adam. Days later, he died in hospital from blunt force trauma injuries. Two years on, as the Isaacs family awaits justice, a Viewfinder and Carte Blanche investigation has revealed that one of
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After sustained criticism in Parliament this year, the South African Police Service (SAPS) has issued a circular to call out its commanders for their “inaction” and “reluctance” when officers under their command are implicated in serious crimes. Issued on 8 October, the circular warns that police supervisors who fail to act “promptly” in such cases
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