“Shoot the bastards” – for all the pressure they’re under, it’s hard to imagine any of Gordon Brown’s cabinet coming out with such a violent expression at a press conference, or in a newspaper column. (Mandelson, admittedly, would pull it off beautifully, but he’s presently too busy keeping a lid on GB’s temper to give his own free rein.)

Here, politicians seem much more comfortable with bloodthirsty language. The country’s currently engaged in a furious debate over the “shoot to kill” policy supposedly being pushed on the Police by politicians. It goes back to May last year, when Susan Shabangu – then deputy safety and security minister – told police at an anti-crime meeting in Pretoria:

“You must kill the bastards if they threaten you or the community. You must not worry about the regulations. That is my responsibility… You have been given guns, now use them. I want no warning shots. You have one Shot and it must be a kill shot.”

The message has since been pushed home by deputy police minister Fikile Mbalula, who repeated it in a recent newspaper article, and told a press conference this week: “Yes, shoot the bastards. Hard-nut-to-crack, incorrigible bastards.” Even President Jacob Zuma seemed to hint at giving the police carte blanche to shoot criminals, when he said in September that “criminals don’t take an oath to do warning shots”, and called for police to take “extraordinary measures” against them.

The consequences of all this? The number of innocent civilians shot by police officers has been steadily climbing in recent years – but according to the secretary of police, the rise began well before all the inflammatory talk, so the blame must lie elsewhere.

Try telling that to the parents of Atlegang Aphane. The three-year-old was sitting in a car last week with his uncle in Midrand, northern Jo’burg, last week when a policeman drove up alongside and fired into the car, without even getting out of his vehicle. The child was hit in the chest and died instantly. His uncle’s car happened to have been parked near the home of a suspected criminal, apparently.

The killing followed the shooting in Pretoria on November 1 of Kgothatso Ndobe, who panicked and ran away when police arrived outside his house, because he had been smoking a joint. He was immediately shot in the head. A witness said:

“I asked Inspector Skosana if that was a warning shot or if it was aimed directly at the boy. Skosana said he did not care because that’s how they were told to operate.”

There are too many similar cases to list here.

Mbalula fobbed off criticism about Atlegang’s death by saying it was “unavoidable” that civilians would be killed: “Where you are caught in combat with criminals, innocent people are going to die not deliberately but in the exchange of fire.”

This reminds me of the realisation that NATO forces in Afghanistan have come to: that their primary duty should not be to kill, but to support the civilian community. Afghanistan is a war zone; SA, despite its undeniably shocking of levels of corruption and violent crime, is a politically stable country governed by the rule of law. Its people deserve to have a police force that treats it as such, not as a lawless theatre for “combat”. And in any case, urban gangs – whether in London, LA or Jo’burg – love nothing more than to play at being “soldiers”. If Mbalula’s plans for remilitarising the police go ahead, the violence will only escalate.

On a brighter note, things are going very well at Business Day. Had two front-page leads this week – one for Companies, one for the main newspaper – and am heading out of town tomorrow to cover the tripartite alliance summit, where the ANC bash out policy with their partners in the SA Communist Party and COSATU, the trade unions’ congress. Thoroughly enjoying the city as well – just need to get round to buying a bloody car…