Police Reservists Needed – can bloggers apply? May 4, 2007
Posted by Angus in South Africa.trackback
Interesting thought.
The police need reservists and are recruiting quite aggressively – needing 15,000 new recruits. And they are trying to get ‘big, strong, rugby players’ in the hope that some beef is added back into the reservist stew.
However they have some exclusions – people that are not allowed to be appointed as police reservists. Here are 2 of them:
- a person who is actively involved in politics or who is
an outspoken supporter of a political party and who may
violate the non-partisan nature of the Service; - a full-time journalist;
So, if you are regular blogger – are you excluded?
- If not – what are and aren’t you allowed to blog about?
- How would this be managed?
And if your blog has political undertones (i.e. govt. bashing) – does that exclude you?
Would be an interesting one to test.
Anyone interested? If you are, here are the 7 application forms and 47 hoops you need to jump through.
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Here’s a thought: “What if you blog about being anti-crime in SA and want very much to help your country given the scourge of statistics regarding crime?” Would people like this be allowed to apply? I mean these people would definitely have a passion for the job, but do have biases, which all the types excluded from applying also have…
Interesting debate – I’d like to know if the SAPS is aware of the thousands and thousands of Citizen journos out there, and if they’re curtailed from applying in any way.
Precisely – so the ones that want to make a difference, and that have a voice via their blog, could be perceived not to comply with the ‘non-partisan’ nature of the service.
Nice point.
you are not a journalist
you are an online diarist — so you can join the community policing forum if you want, stop hiding behind the blogosphere and go and do something
even though I think the SA service can live without their help