About SAFLII
Databases
Search
Terms of Use
RSS Feeds
South Africa: Supreme Court of Appeal
SAFLII
>>
Databases
>>
South Africa: Supreme Court of Appeal
>>
2012
>>
[2012] ZASCA 161
|
|
National Commissioner of Police and Another v Coetzee (649/11) [2012] ZASCA 161; 2013 (1) SACR 358 (SCA) (16 November 2012)
THE
SUPREME COURT OF APPEAL OF SOUTH AFRICA
JUDGMENT
Case No: 649/11
In the matter between:
Reportable
NATIONAL COMMISSIONER
OF POLICE
..............................................
First
Appellant
MINISTER OF SAFETY &
SECURITY
................................................
Second
Appellant
and
JACK COETZEE
............................................................................................
Respondent
Neutral citation:
National Commissioner of Police v Coetzee
(649/11)
[2012]
ZASCA 161
(16 November 2012)
Coram:
MPATI P,
CLOETE, PONNAN, BOSIELO and PETSE JJA
Heard:
28 August
2012
Delivered:
16
November 2012
Summary: Criminal
procedure – arrest – legality – refusal of bail
does not render otherwise lawful arrest unlawful
– no place for
interdictum de homine libero exhibendo
in those circumstances.
______________________________________________________________________
ORDER
_____________________________________________________________________
On appeal
from
:
North Gauteng High
Court, Pretoria (Du Plessis AJ, sitting as court of first instance).
1 The appeal is upheld
with costs, which shall include the costs of two counsel.
2 The order of the court
below is set aside and replaced with the following:
‘
The application is
dismissed with costs.’
______________________________________________________________________
JUDGMENT
_____________________________________________________________________
MPATI P (CLOETE,
PONNAN, BOSIELO and PETSE JJA CONCURRING):
[1] This appeal, though
against the costs orders made by the court a quo (Du Plessis AJ),
involves the question of the authority
of a high court to release
from custody an arrested and detained person before he or she has
been brought before a lower court.
It is common cause that during the
afternoon of Sunday, 15 November 2009, the respondent was flagged
down by a metro police traffic
officer, while driving his motor
vehicle along Trans-Oranje Road on his way home to Pretoria, from
Hartebeespoort Dam. He did not
stop. In the vehicle with him were his
wife, Ms Hester Coetzee, his son, Vincent, and the latter’s
girlfriend. The metro
police officer, later identified as Constable
Frans Sivayi, gave chase and, with the help of reinforcement
s
,
managed to stop the respondent, who was then arrested and taken to
the Pretoria West Police Station, where he was detained. He
was given
a SAPD 14A form headed ‘NOTICE OF RIGHTS IN TERMS OF THE
CONSTITUTION’ through which he was informed that
he was ‘being
detained for the following reason: FAILED TO COMPLY WITH INSTRUCTION
OF TRAFFIC OFFICER, CRIMEN INJURIA AND
DRIVING UNLICENCED AND
UNREGISTERED MOTOR’.
[2] Later
that evening the respondent’s wife engaged the services of an
attorney to secure the respondent’s release
from custody. It
appears that there was no notice of motion placed before the court a
quo, but in her affidavit in support of the
application for the
respondent’s release, she asserts that ‘[i]ndien die
Agbare hof sal besluit om Borg toe te staan
kan ek R500 bekostig’.
Despite this wording counsel for the respondent submitted in this
court that what was before the court
a quo was not a bail application
but an approach to the court for it to consider and to ‘ventilate’
the common law
principle relating to the
interdictum
de homine libero exhibendo.
The
application was heard at 23h00 and Du Plessis AJ made the following
order:
‘
1.
The respondents are ordered to immediately release the applicant from
custody at the Pretoria West Police Station, or any other
place where
the applicant may be held.
2.
The respondents are called upon to provide written reasons why the
applicant was not given bail or an opportunity to apply for
bail, and
why the applicant was not given an opportunity to pay a fine for the
alleged contravention committed, which reasons shall
be presented to
the above Honourable Court and judge, in the urgent court on 17
November 2009.
3.
The respondents are ordered to provide this Court on 17 November 2009
with the names of the station commander of the Pretoria
West Police
Station that was on duty during the evening of 15 November 2009, as
well as the name of the investigating officer of
the applicant.’
The learned acting judge
had indicated during argument before him that he intended to issue a
rule nisi.
[3] As to
what transpired on 17 November 2009 Du Plessis AJ says the following
in his judgment delivered on 11 October 2010:
1
‘
Further
affidavits were then filed by the parties, whereafter the matter was
finally argued. I required full reasons why the applicant
was not
given bail or granted the opportunity of paying a fine by the SAPS
after having been arrested, and as to who should pay
the costs of the
application. The station commander, the Metro policeman, the
investigating officer, and the commander responsible
that evening for
charging persons and granting bail, eventually appeared before me,
and they were all represented by the State
Attorney and counsel. They
were joined as respondents and had the opportunity to file affidavits
and be represented
.’
2
The learned acting judge
confirmed the order he had made previously and further ordered the
station commander, Senior Superintendent
Moodley, Superintendent
Klopper, Captain Nhlazo and Inspector Dulebu, all of the Pretoria
West Police Station and Constable Sivayi
to pay the respondent’s
(applicant in that case) and the first and second appellants’
(first and second respondents
in that case) costs
de bonis
propriis
on the scale as between attorney and own client. He also
ordered the appellants to pay any further outstanding costs ‘in
the
event, and only in the event of all execution steps having been
taken, finalised and exhausted against the abovementioned officials’.
The learned acting judge subsequently dismissed the appellants’
application for leave to appeal against the costs orders
he made.
This appeal is with leave of this court and is against the court a
quo’s costs orders only.
[4] At the first hearing
before the court below during the evening of 15 November 2009 the
respondent’s attorney, Mr Riaan
Meyer (Meyer), testified orally
that the respondent ‘was arrested . . . for negligent and
reckless driving’ and that
the normal procedure in respect of
that offence was that ‘one can get a fine of R500 or R1000’
(page1). At the second
hearing (‘return day’) it was
argued on behalf of the respondent that his arrest and detention were
unlawful and that
the court had correctly ordered his immediate
release.
[5] In his affidavit
deposed to on 18 November 2009 the respondent averred that while he
was driving along Trans – Oranje
Road he saw a person move
towards the road from a motor vehicle, which was presumably parked on
the side of the road to his left
and ahead of him. This person
signalled to him to stop, but because he was not convinced that the
person was a law enforcement
officer (geregsdienaar) he did not stop.
He decided to carry on and after a short distance (‘n ent
verder) persons in a motor
vehicle followed him and signalled to him
to stop. His son then shouted in the direction of the pursuers –
Sivayi and a colleague
- saying they should follow them to the police
station. The respondent stated that he was aware of certain instances
where criminals
held themselves out as traffic officers and that he
therefore did not want to endanger his wife and his son’s
girlfriend
who were in his vehicle. The court a quo accepted this
explanation and held that ‘it was justifiable for the
[respondent]
to have indicated that he was driving to the nearest
police station’.
[6] In
dealing with the lawfulness of the arrest Du Plessis AJ referred to s
35(1)
(f)
of the
Constitution, which provides that everyone who is arrested for
allegedly committing an offence has the right to be released
from
detention if the interests of justice permit, subject to reasonable
conditions. He also referred to s 35(2)
(d)
which provides that everyone who is detained has the
right to challenge the lawfulness of the detention in person before a
court
and, if the detention is unlawful, to be released. The learned
acting judge concluded, correctly so in my view, that the provisions
of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 (CPA) ‘should
therefore be considered against the background of these
constitutional
provisions’. He made the comment that arrest is
the most drastic method to secure a person’s attendance at his
trial
and that it ought to be confined to serious cases. Referring to
S v More
1993 (2) SACR
606
(W) he said that an arrest should be effected only where it is
likely that a summons or written notice to appear will be
ineffective.
[7] Du
Plessis AJ then considered the alleged offences in respect of which
the respondent was being detained and held that not one
of them was
an offence referred to in Schedule 1 to the CPA and that therefore
the respondent’s arrest ‘could only
have been an arrest
in terms of s 40(1)
(a)
of
the [CPA]’
3
.
He further said the following:
‘
In
the light of the provisions of the Constitution, read with the
provisions of s 59, it is clear that an accused person who has
been
arrested for minor offences, for which bail may be granted in terms
of s 59 of the [CPA], has a right to be treated in such
a way that he
is considered, for purposes of obtaining bail in terms of s 59 of the
[CPA], as soon as possible. Obviously, the
same factors will have to
be taken into account by such a police officer as those applicable to
normal bail applications.’
4
After
referring to the decision of Bertelsman J in
Louw
& another v Minister of Safety and Security & others
2006
(2) SACR 178
(T) the learned acting judge expressed himself thus
(para 48):
‘
Therefore,
if a preferable method of an accused’s attendance is through a
summons, that procedure should be employed. In this
regard the risk
of the suspect absconding or committing further crime should be
considered. An arrest without any rational, reasonable
basis should
not occur indiscriminately.’
And (para 49):
‘
It
does not matter how severe the alleged criminal offence may be. The
person to be arrested is still presumed an innocent person
whose
rights to freedom, dignity and fair treatment should be upheld.’
The court concluded that
in the present matter the arrest was unlawful. As will become
apparent presently, the court below might
have confused the arrest of
the respondent with his subsequent detention.
[8] Du Plessis AJ made
this finding (that the arrest was unlawful) on the basis of an
earlier finding he had made that he had no
doubt that the respondent,
his wife and attorney, Meyer, requested bail to be granted and that
it was refused. There was no reason
whatsoever, he said, why he
should have been approached at 23h00 on a Sunday evening for the
release of the respondent if nobody
on his behalf, or the respondent
himself, had not asked for bail or to be released. He said the
following immediately after his
finding that the arrest was unlawful:
‘
As
I have mentioned above, those responsible for consideration of
granting the applicant bail refused to do so. It follows that
the
applicant was held unlawfully and detained unlawfully at the Pretoria
West Police Station.’
5
These comments and the
conclusion reached by the court a quo are totally inexplicable and
can perhaps be ascribed to overzealousness
on its part. There was no
evidence before it, at any stage, that the respondent, his wife or
his attorney ever asked anyone of
‘those responsible’ for
considering bail, whoever they may be, that the respondent be granted
bail or that he be released
on warning (as contemplated in s 72 of
the CPA). In his affidavit in support of the application he launched
on behalf of the respondent
Meyer merely alleged that he telephoned
the investigating officer and enquired from him as to why he had not
granted the respondent
bail, to which the investigating officer
responded that he was off duty, after which he (the investigating
officer) put the telephone
down. Meyer did not mention the name of
the investigating officer in his affidavit. This is not surprising
because there was at
that stage no investigating officer. The docket
relating to the respondent was allocated to a Detective Constable
Mtsweni (Mtsweni)
only on Monday, 16 November 2009.
[9] It is true that in
his affidavit the respondent stated that his attorney (Meyer)
telephoned ‘someone’, obviously
Sivayi, on the number
which Sivayi had given to the respondent’s wife, and that that
person refused to identify himself,
but simply refused bail. These
assertions were confirmed by Meyer in a confirmatory affidavit. It
should be noted, however, that
these affidavits (respondent’s
affidavit and Meyer’s confirmatory affidavit) were deposed to
after the ‘return
day’, which was on 17 November 2009. It
is not clear how they became part of the record.
[10] Mtsweni deposed to
an opposing affidavit on 17 November 2009 in which he alleged that
the telephone number on which Meyer allegedly
called ‘the
investigating officer’ was that of Sivayi’s mobile phone.
Clearly, Meyer must have spoken to Sivayi,
who, according to Mtsweni,
in any event ‘did not have the necessary powers to release the
[respondent] on bail, as he [was]
not a member of the South African
Police Service’.
6
In addition, Sivayi was only a
constable at the relevant time. Mtsweni averred further:
‘
The
applicant did not require urgent medical attention, and neither his
attorney nor his wife advanced any special circumstances
why he
should be released. In the absence of any formal request by the
applicant, his family or his attorney for bail, there existed
no
reason for this court to exercise its powers in favour of the
applicant.’
He attached to his
affidavit the relevant pages of the occurrence book in which there
was no indication of any request for bail
by the respondent or anyone
else on his behalf. I should mention that in his oral testimony
before the court a quo Meyer made no
mention of requesting, or
applying for bail from any police officer, but merely stated that he
had telephoned the investigating
officer on a number given to him by
the respondent’s wife; that the investigating officer ‘did
not want to tell [him]
his surname’ and that he said he was not
on duty and then ‘dropped the phone on my ear’. In my
view, the respondent’s
version as contained in his affidavit of
18 November 2009, which is not at all in line with Meyer’s own
version, though confirmed
by him, may simply be rejected on the
papers.
7
The assertion that bail was refused
was clearly an afterthought. It follows that the finding by the court
below that those responsible
for considering bail refused to grant
bail was plainly without foundation.
[11] To justify its
decision to release the respondent, the court a quo invoked the
interdictum de homine libero
exhibendo
, a remedy used to
protect the liberty of the subject from being restrained unlawfully
by the State.
8
As has been mentioned above, the court
found that the arrest of the respondent was unlawful, hence the order
for his release. I
have already held that finding to have been
without foundation because no request was ever made to a police
official for the respondent’s
release on bail. But there were
other comments made by the court a quo which require attention. It
remarked, after referring to
the Constitution which ‘places a
very high premium on the right to human dignity and freedom’:
‘
The
Spirit of the Constitution, the recognition of basic human rights,
and the right to freedom in particular, enshrined in the
Constitution, should not be compromised in any way whatsoever through
the actions of government officials.
The
courts should therefore jealously guard these rights and act
decisively upon the infringement thereof. Furthermore, it is
important
that those who act with impunity, and who think that they
can do as they please, simply because they have the force of the
whole
law - enforcement system behind them, should be brought to book
and restrained. The whole wrath of the legal system, the rule of
law,
the courts and the public should be brought upon such officials.’
9
After this exhortation
the court urged that ‘other possibilities should be considered
to deter police services and Metro Police
services from breaching the
enshrined rights held dear by everybody in this country’ and
that ‘[t]he public must be
protected’. It is for these
reasons that the court awarded the costs orders that it did.
[12] But more
importantly, and as I have mentioned above (para 8), the court’s
conclusion that the respondent’s detention
was unlawful
followed the finding by it, albeit erroneous, that those responsible
for considering bail refused to do so. I find
it difficult to
comprehend how a refusal by a police officer to grant bail could
render an otherwise lawful arrest and subsequent
detention unlawful.
As the court a quo itself acknowledged, a peace officer is entitled,
in terms of s 40(1)
(a)
of
the CPA, to arrest a person without a warrant. And in this court
counsel for the respondent did not argue that Sivayi was not
entitled
to arrest the respondent. Nor was the lawfulness of the arrest ever
in issue before the court a quo. It is in effect the
lawfulness of
the detention that was in issue, although the court, in the course of
its judgment, said that the arrest of a person
without a warrant ‘may
not necessarily be the
right
procedure to follow’.
(My underlining.) It was never the respondent’s case that his
arrest was unlawful. In his statement
dated 15 November 2009, which
was attached to Mtsweni’s affidavit, Sivayi stated that on the
day in question he was on duty
and in full uniform when he was doing
road policing and ‘tried to pull a white Mercedes Benz with
registration No: LHY 035
GP over’. The driver failed to stop
and, instead, accelerated towards him. He alerted his colleagues and,
accompanied by
another colleague, gave chase. At a certain stage,
when they were right next to the respondent’s vehicle he used
what he
called ‘a micro-phone’ (presumably a loud hailer)
to command the respondent to stop. The respondent hurled insults at
them and refused to do so. In so doing the respondent also failed to
obey traffic lights. Sivayi stated that when the respondent
was
eventually stopped he (Sivayi) explained to him that he was arresting
him for ‘failing to comply with instruction of
[a] traffic
officer (failed to stop), crimen injuria, failing to comply with road
traffic light and driving [an] unlicensed and
unregistered motor
vehicle’. In these circumstances Sivayi was clearly empowered
to arrest the respondent without a warrant,
in terms of s 40 of the
CPA.
10
[13] I nevertheless agree
with the court a quo that arrest, being the most drastic method to
secure a person’s attendance
at his trial, ‘ought to be
confined to serious cases’, that is, it should be confined to
cases where such person faces
a relatively serious charge. Indeed,
that is what is desirable.
11
But where a peace
officer does effect a lawful arrest in terms of s 40(1)
(a)
of the
CPA for what may not be considered to be a serious offence, as may be
the position in the present instance, the arrest, or
subsequent
detention, does not become unlawful, thereby entitling a high court
to order the release of the arrested person, merely
because a
summons, or notice to appear in court, would have been equally
effective in ensuring his or her attendance at court,
12
or because bail
has been refused.
[14] The jurisdictional
facts necessary for an arrest under s 40(1)
(a)
are:
(i) the arrestor must be a peace officer, (ii) an offence must have
been committed or there must have been an attempt to commit
an
offence, and (iii) in his or her presence. The arresting officer is
not required to conduct a hearing before effecting an arrest.
Whether
an arrested person should be released, and if so, subject to what
conditions, arises for later decision by another person
13
and that is the
safeguard to the arrestee’s constitutional rights. Once the
jurisdictional requirements are satisfied the
peace officer has a
discretion as to whether or not to exercise his or her powers of
arrest.
14
Obviously, the
discretion must be exercised properly. But the question as to whether
in this case Sivayi properly exercised his
discretion does not arise.
That issue was not raised before the court a quo and the court never
considered it.
[15] Section 50(1)
(b)
of the CPA provides that:
‘
[a]
person who is in detention as contemplated in paragraph
(a)
shall,
as soon as reasonably possible, be informed of his or her right to
institute bail proceedings.’
15
And s 50(1)
(c)
reads:
‘
Subject
to paragraph
(d),
if
such an arrested person is not released by reason that –
(i)
no charge is to be brought against him or her; or
(ii)
bail is not granted to him or her in terms of section 59 [by a police
official of above the rank of non-commissioned officer]
or 59A [by a
Director of Public Prosecutions or a prosecutor],
he
or she shall be brought before a lower court as soon as reasonably
possible, but not later than
48
hours after the arrest.’
16
The section thus makes
provision for the procedure to be followed where bail has not been
granted, whether or not it was requested
and refused. The best the
court a quo could have done in the instant case, assuming that its
finding that bail was sought and refused
was correct, was to issue a
mandamus directing the police official responsible for considering
bail at the Pretoria West Police
Station on the night in question, to
reconsider bail, or that the respondent be brought before a lower
court on the next day (Monday),
since a person arrested with or
without a warrant ‘is not entitled to be brought to court
outside ordinary court hours’.
17
The
interdictum
de homine libero exhibendo
invoked
by the court is a remedy employed where the detention of the person
sought to be released was
ab
initio
unlawful.
18
That was not the case here.
[16] Courts must guard
against and resist the temptation to impose duties on police
officials under the guise of an alleged protection
of rights
guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, which existing law, in this case
the CPA, does not impose. It is well to repeat what
Stegmann J said
in
S v Baleka & others
1986 (1) SA 361
(T) at 374H - 375A:
‘
The
Supreme Court has inherent powers under the common law, exercised
particularly by way of the
interdictum
de homine libero exhibendo
,
to protect the liberty of the subject, and to ensure that
interference by the State with individual liberty does not go beyond
the proper exercise of the State’s lawful powers. Nevertheless,
when a person has lawfully been arrested and charged with
the
commission of an offence, the question of his right to apply for his
release on bail pending his trial or the outcome thereof,
is a
question which is exhaustively governed by statutory provisions. No
room remains for the exercise of the court’s inherent
common
law powers in that respect, save, perhaps, to the extent that such
powers can be exercised within the framework set by the
statutory
provisions.’
The same applies, in my
view, where the arrested person has not as yet been charged, as was
the case with the respondent in this
instance.
[17] The conclusion I
have reached above, that the finding of the court a quo that the
detention of the respondent was unlawful
had no foundation, means
that the substratum or basis for the costs orders it made has
collapsed. The orders must accordingly be
set aside. But I must
stress that I have grave difficulty in understanding why, in any
event, costs orders – let alone the
unprecedented punitive
costs orders – were made against the station commander of the
Pretoria West Police Station, senior
superintendent Moodley, and his
assistant, superintendent Klopper. Their sin, it seems, was a failure
to explain or to give reasons
on the ‘return day’ ‘why
no member of the SAPS considered the [respondent’s] position
and why the complaints
commanders, Nhlazo and Dulebu did not take any
action’, and ‘why the station commander on duty at the
time did not
do anything pertaining to the [respondent’s]
position’.
19
Although these officers, including
Captain Nhlazo and Inspector Dulebu, did not depose to any
affidavits, the court a quo concluded
that they ‘had been
joined as respondents to the proceedings, because they were
represented by counsel and also because they
opposed the relief
sought, and even argued that the arrest and detention were lawful . .
.’ and that they ‘infringed
upon the constitutional right
of the [respondent] not to be detained unlawfully . . . ’. The
fact of the matter, though,
is that the officers were invited by the
court a quo to provide it ‘with further facts pertaining to the
events at the police
station’. Captain Nhlazo was apparently on
duty at the time the respondent was detained and Inspector Dulebu
took over from
him at 19h00. (The same costs orders were made against
them.) The implication is that Inspector Dulebu should, upon coming
on duty,
have enquired from each and every detainee held at his
police station what the reason for his or her arrest was and to
consider
whether or not to grant bail. Much as that would be a most
desirable exercise, it would, to my mind, be an onerous duty to
impose
on the police. It is a well-known fact that the police service
suffers from an acute shortage of personnel. The reasoning of the
court a quo is, with respect, untenable.
[18] As to Sivayi, I have
already mentioned that as a metro police officer he had no authority
to grant bail in terms of s 59 of
the CPA. In any event, as the
arrestor he had a limited role in the process. As I pointed out in
general terms in para 14 above,
he, as the arresting officer, was not
called upon to determine whether the respondent ought to be detained
pending a trial as that
was the role of a police official as
contemplated in s 59 of the CPA, or a court. It follows that the
appeal must succeed.
[19] Counsel for the
respondent urged us ‘to bring the provisions of s 3I
(b)
of the
National Road Traffic Act 93 of
1996
into line with the requirements of [s 13(8) of the
South African
Police Service Act 68 of 1995
] . . . by affording the Legislature a
reasonable opportunity of 6 months to bring about the amendment’.
20
Counsel submitted that the
‘
most
rational’ requirement - which the Legislature should be
directed to bring about – is that it should be prescribed
that
roadblocks ‘must be discernible in the form of a proper sign,
barrier or object’. But this court has no power
to direct the
Legislature to effect amendments to legislation.
[20] In the result, the
following order is made:
1 The appeal is upheld
with costs, which shall include the costs of two counsels.
2 The order of the court
below is set aside and replaced with the following:
‘
The application is
dismissed with costs.’
___________________
L Mpati
President
APPEARANCES
For the Appellants: T P
Kruger (with him L le Roux)
Instructed by:
The State Attorney,
Pretoria
The State Attorney,
Bloemfontein
Respondent J R Bauer
Instructed by:
Riaan Meyer Inc, Pretoria
McIntyre & van der
Post, Bloemfontein
1
The
judgment is reported as
Coetzee v National Commissioner of Police
& others
2011 (2) SA 227(GNP).
2
Para
7.
3
Section
40(1)
(a)
provides that a peace officer may without warrant
arrest any person who commits or attempts to commit any offence in
his presence.
4
Para
40.
5
Para
51.
6
Section
59(1)
(a)
of the CPA reads: ‘An accused who is in
custody in respect of any offence, other than an offence referred to
in
Part II
or
Part III
of Schedule 2 may, before his or her first
appearance in a lower court, be released on bail in respect of such
offence by any
police official of or above the rank of
non-commissioned officer, in consultation with the police official
charged with the investigation,
if the accused deposits at the
police station the sum of money determined by such police official.’
7
Plascon
- Evans Paints Ltd v Van Riebeeck Paints (Pty) Ltd
[1984] ZASCA 51
;
1984 (3) SA
623
(A) at 634H – 635C.
8
See
Wood & others v Ondangwa Tribal Authority & another
1975
(2) SA 294
(A) at 308C-311A.
9
Paras
44 and 45.
10
Failure
to comply with an instruction or direction of a traffic officer is a
punishable offence under
s 3J
, read with
s 89
, of the
National Road
Traffic Act 93 of 1996
.
11
See
S v More
1993 (2) SACR 606
(W) at 608
e-j
and
authorities there quoted.
12
Compare
Tsose v Minister of Justice & others
1951 (3) SA 10
(A)
at 17G-H.
13
Minister
of Safety and Security v Sekhoto & another
2011 (5) SA 367
(SCA) para 44.
14
Ibid.
para 28 and the cases there cited.
15
Paragraph
(a)
provides that any person who is arrested with or without
a warrant for allegedly committing a crime shall be brought to a
police
station as soon as possible.
16
Paragraph
(d)
deals with the procedure to be followed when the period
of 48 hours expires outside ordinary court hours, etc.
17
Section
50
(6)(b).
18
">
18
Minister
of Home Affairs & another v Dabengwa
1984 (2) SA 345
(ZSC)
at 359C-D and 360A-B.
19
Para
19 of the judgment.
20
Section
3I
(b)
of the
National Road Traffic Act provides
that a
traffic officer may, subject to the provisions of that Act or any
other law and when in uniform, require the driver of
any vehicle to
stop. Section 13(8) of the SA Police Service Act empowers the
National or Provincial Commissioner to issue a written
authorisation
to a member under his or her command, set up a road block or cause
one to be set up on a public road.