The Provincial Commissioner of the South African Police Service in Limpopo, Lieutenant General Thembi Hadebe has noted with serious concern the statement circulating on social media insinuating that a Police Sergeant who was attached to Polokwane Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offenses Unit who recently allegedly committed suicide was positively linked with the rape of a 14-year-old girl.
The statement which is said to have been issued by a certain organization, claimed the late Sergeant, who sadly died last Friday, 26 May 2023, had just been informed that the DNA tests results came back positive, which proved that he was indeed the father of the child of the 14-year-old girl.
We need to put the record straight and also calling these allegations, untruthful, misleading, malicious and reckless in nature, full of fishing expedition because IPID refutes the allegations.
These allegations do not even need to be given the credence as none of what was mentioned, has sense of truthfulness.
We call upon the said source of information to present one tangible evidence to support these baseless rumours that has potential to cause more harm and spark unnecessary unintended consequences within our society.
The South African Police Service have proper and structured way of dealing with their day to day business. We do not see where the third party is coming in to relate our information.
If there are matters to be shared with communities for public consumption we have relevant channels to do that in terms of relevant protocols.
The South African Police Service is committed to prioritising violent crimes against women and children, vulnerable groups and we have an obligation to ensure that victims of GBV/F receives justice.
It must be noted that the SAPS have the constitutional mandate to fight crime and at no stage we sought services of the third-party in order to discuss our issues.
It must be noted that we do not condone any form of criminality and if such manifest itself we have relevant platforms to deal with that in terms of available legislations.
The source (alleged organisation) as well as the publisher of this unverified allegations which are, unfortunate, baseless and full of reckless and irresponsible reporting need to learn do things in a proper manner to be taken seriously.
