South Africa is on this journey to try and implement a Zero Tolerance approach when it come to the level of alcohol in your blood when driving.

As reported in BusinessTech.co.za, Layton Beard of the AA has an opinion that is shared by the general public in South Africa.

Legislation on its own won’t deal with drunk driving. Enforcement is key.

Layton Beard – Head of Public Relations, AA

Enforcement is key yes, but the enforcers are the actual problem. It is considered general knowledge in South Africa that if you are stopped at a police check point at night that there will be some form of a bribe involved. I had the unfortunate luck to have two bad stories to share.

Story 1: You are drunk, but you can drive

After being pulled over by the SAPS I was informed that I am being arrested because they followed me from from pub and I am intoxicated.

Pointing out to the officer that he only started to follow me a few hundred meters after I exited the KFC on Lynnwood, he was adamant that he was right. His actual words were: “I am the law and what i say goes.”

Fine, cool, whatever. Let’s do the breath test and get this over with. Nooooo. We had to do blood test. How the process works is that they take me to Garsfontein, do the test and we wait for the result. So I ask who drives the car? The other officer will drive the car. Great, could I please see her drivers license to confirm she is legal?

No… if you are a member of the SAPS you have a valid license. This turns out to be incorrect. But anyway.

After 15 minutes of trying to find someone to drive my car, the officer asks me where I stay. I tell him just across the bridge, about 2km away. Cool, I must drive it to my house and they will follow.

Excuse me, but according to you I am intoxicated! It’s ok, also according to him he is the law and I should do what he instructs me to do. So off we drive.

The great thing about the CCTV at my gate is that I now had record of me getting out of my car, sober, and the police getting out and putting me in the back of their van. This become important later in the story.

We drove to Garsfontein Police Station. There were no blood test kits, so we had to go to Mamelodi General Hospital where the test was performed. And then I was arrested. No result, but in his view I was guilty.

What followed was a night I never want to experience again. With my hands cuffed behind my back. This cunt proceeded to drive at high speeds and hit every speed bump as hard as he can. In South Africa it is called a “Cattle Run”. In the back of the enclosed van you have no way to hold on to anything. You are flung around like a sack of potatoes.

At one stage I hit my head and I blacked out. I am not sure how long I was out for. It was at that moment I thought I was going to die.

My shoulder was busted and it felt like I had fractured a lower rib. He just kept on going.

I needed to stop being flung around to avoid further injury, so I pushed my back against the side and my legs against the opposite side to lock my body into a secure position. This did not make him happy. So he stopped at a garage and inflated the pressure on the tyres. We then proceeded with the torture for another 30 minutes before eventually going to the Police Station.

I was a fucking mess.

You hear bad stories about the holding cells in South Africa. So mentally I was preparing myself for another fight. To not get beaten up or raped in the cell. It sounds dramatic, but that was where my head was at. I was in survival mode. During my booking there was verbal abuse and screaming in my ear by the other officers on duty.

Eventually they put me in the cell with 18 other guys.

When the door closed behind me they did storm towards me. Not to attack me, but to help me as I was collapsing. They gave me a mattress and two of them sat with me wanting to know what happened. One started to scream at the cops wanting to know what they have done to me.

18 sober men, who just like me, got stopped and accused of being drunk. Because you see, the Garsfontein Police Station had a quota for the night.

The next day at 12 I got bail and the moment I sat in my friends car I cried. Because of anger, because i was grateful to be alive. I cried.

When my case came up in court it was thrown out when I presented the video of me driving my car. Timestamps are important. The time recorded when I was “arrested” for being drunk. The time on the video when I drove my car on their instruction. The time when I was actually tested. And the time I eventually got to the Police Station. A 15 minute drive from the hospital should not take more than an hour. Torture does.

Story 2: You are drunk, but we can make a plan

A few month after the first incident I was stopped at a roadblock in Hatfield, Pretoria. Because of the first incident I was on a strict diet of Coke Zero. I am serious. I was not going to give them any opportunity to claim I was intoxicated.

They asked if I was drinking and I said I was out but I only drank Coke Zero. They asked if I would take a breath test and I said I did not have a problem with it, because I WAS NOT DRUNK.

So we went over to the two parked mini buses where they were conducting the tests and i stood in the que behind four other men waiting to be tested. The officer told me to come to the other van and then took out an open test and asked me to blow in it. I protested and said no, I want a closed test. You need to take the tube out of a sealed container in front of me. So then his buddies started to surround me.

I told him I wan’t to speak to his superior. I was not going to blow into a compromised device. He said fine, we can book you and go for a blood test. So I fucking blew into his fucking device and tested 1.2 or something. In my view I should have been crawling on all fours with that level of alcohol.

His response: “Ah, we need to make a plan here.”

So I asked him how much??? R500. So I lost my bribe virginity that night.

It only cost R500 to go from 1.2 to sober. What if the reading was correct? What if i was actually drunk? Not only did they take a bribe but they then actually put me back on the road where i could have killed someone.

The real question

How many of the reported cases of accidents when the driver was drunk could have been prevented if our cops did not ask for bribes.

And why was I almost killed when I complied?

My story is NOT unique! I am not special. I am one of hundreds of South African citizens who have gone through this or know of someone who has.

Changing the fucking law will not solve the problem. And don’t tell me it is a small portion of police officers who are corrupt. In both instances the other officers did nothing to intervene and stop the behaviour. I have reason not to trust them. We all do.

They want to implement a Zero Tolerance policy, but we have no way to ask for a Zero Corruption policy and expect fair and humane treatment. Then again, with Bheki Cele at the helm, we never will.