ANTI-FRAUD TRAINING IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE SERVICE (SAPS): A STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE
Jacob Tseko Mofokeng, I.D. De Vries · DergiPark (Istanbul University) · 2016
Since after the democratic dispensation in 1994, South Africa became a globalcommunity that directly or indirectly, attracted transnational organised crimenetworks as an emerging democratic country. As a result, legislative mandatesand public expectations have heightened the necessity to hither define the SouthAfrican Police Service’s (SAPS) officials, especially the investigation officials’responsibility for detecting fraud during the performance of their duties. A mixedmethod approach was utilised in this study, in which one of the strategiccomponent in the SAPS, namely anti-fraud training, was tested by, inter alia,determining the relevancy, adequacy and appropriateness of the detectivecurriculum in comparison with their day-to-day performance. An open-endedsection allowing for general comments, was also included in the questionnaire incase respondents wish to highlight a particular point not addressed in thequestionnaire. The stratified random sampling technique was used from thepopulation of 20 0005 general detectives deployed across 1116 stations in the nineprovinces of South Africa. A representative sample of 1920 general detectives andDetective Commanders across the rank structure was drawn from a staffcompilation list obtained from the SAPS Division Personnel Services. From eachselected station, an attempt was made to ensure that at least ten per cent of thepopulation participated in this study. The sample realization was 1198 (62.4%) ofthe respondents who returned the questionnaire.The findings indicated that thedetectives were notproperly trained and not all the detectives attended the DLP.The findings also revealed that to some detectives, training is not possible due tohuge workload at the local police stations and to those who managed to attend the training, could not be provided with refresher training in the area(s) such ascorruption and fraud related investigation, statement taking and report writing, toenhance their detective skills