A police officer can have enormous power over another person. A general can have enormous power over an entire institution.

That is why the SAPS Amendment Bill currently before Parliament matters far beyond the wording of legislation. It forces us to ask a fairly uncomfortable question. Are we fixing the weaknesses that have allowed policing in South Africa to deteriorate, or are we simply updating the rules around the same system?

There is a lot in this Bill that deserves serious consideration.

It creates a National Policing Advisory Committee intended to develop objective standards for recruitment, appointment and promotion. It provides for integrity testing of new police officials and lifestyle audits of serving members. It strengthens disciplinary structures, deals with conflicts of interest in investigations, provides a clearer basis for specialised units and makes important changes concerning Crime Intelligence.

It also expands the potential role of municipal police services in public order policing.

These are not insignificant changes.

But legislation should be judged by what happens when things go wrong, not by how good the institutional architecture looks on paper.

Take integrity management.

The Bill requires a new recruit to complete an integrity test successfully before appointment. That makes sense.

The standard becomes less convincing once somebody is already inside SAPS. A lifestyle audit may be performed when there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a member is living above his or her income.

Why wait for reasonable suspicion?

Surely the standard for somebody being promoted to general should be higher than the standard for simply remaining employed.

Before anyone is appointed or promoted into senior SAPS management, I believe there should be meaningful integrity clearance. That should include proper financial and lifestyle scrutiny, security vetting and consideration of serious unresolved criminal or disciplinary matters.

That does not mean an allegation equals guilt. It does not. Due process remains essential.

But there is a difference between finding someone guilty of misconduct and deciding whether someone with unresolved serious integrity risks should, at that point, be elevated into one of the most powerful positions in the state.

If the lifestyle audit reveals unexplained wealth or serious financial risk, the promotion should not simply continue. If a serious disciplinary matter remains unresolved, resolve it. If there is a criminal matter that directly raises questions about the candidate's fitness for senior command, it cannot simply be ignored.

Where the appointment is sufficiently senior, there is also a reasonable case for independent verification of the integrity process. It should not become an internal box-ticking exercise in which SAPS effectively assures itself that everything is in order.

The new National Policing Advisory Committee could be valuable here. The Bill gives it a role in developing objective standards for recruitment, selection, appointment, and promotion, as well as professional standards concerning integrity and accountability.

But recommendations alone will not professionalise SAPS.

We should ask what happens when those standards are ignored.

The Bill also forces us to think more honestly about policing capacity.

South Africa has SAPS, Metro Police, provincial and municipal traffic services, and other law enforcement capacity. They have different constitutional and statutory functions, and for good reason. But those boundaries should not become sacred simply because that is how the system has always worked.

The Bill itself recognises this. It proposes allowing municipal police services to establish public order policing capacity, subject to defined SAPS command arrangements.

Once Parliament accepts the principle that municipal police functions can evolve, it becomes reasonable to ask what else can responsibly change.

The City of Cape Town formally declared an intergovernmental dispute this week over its request for Metro Police investigative powers. Whatever one's view of that dispute, Parliament cannot simply pretend the question does not exist.

If a properly trained Metro Police officer arrests a person, recovers an illegal firearm, or uncovers evidence of gang or drug activity, should every investigation necessarily have to be transferred to SAPS? Or could accredited municipal investigators deal with defined categories of crime, subject to national standards, proper docket control and cooperation with prosecutors?

There may be legitimate constitutional and operational objections. Those should be tested. But “this is how we have always done it” is not an adequate answer.

The same principle applies to smaller functions.

Why, for example, should Parliament not examine whether properly trained and accredited traffic or other law enforcement officers could be authorised to take buccal samples from qualifying offenders, with exactly the same chain of custody, privacy, and forensic safeguards?

This is not an argument for handing police powers indiscriminately to every government official. Quite the opposite. Expanded powers require better training, clearer accountability, and stronger oversight.

Nor should decentralisation become an excuse for SAPS to abandon its constitutional responsibilities.

The point is to ask whether we are using the law enforcement resources the taxpayer already pays for as intelligently as possible.

There are other parts of the Bill that deserve the same scrutiny. Dedicated disciplinary units could help, but only if cases are finalised properly and consequences follow. Providing a statutory basis for specialised units is sensible, but a unit without vehicles, trained personnel, intelligence, or investigative capability is specialised in name only. Strengthening Crime Intelligence in legislation means little if corruption, weak vetting, or poor operational capability undermine it in practice.

The Bill therefore has the potential to be important.

But Parliament should resist the temptation to treat its introduction as reform already achieved.

The real test is much harder.

Can a compromised officer still rise through the ranks? Can disciplinary matters drag on without consequence? Can capable law enforcement resources remain unused because institutions are protecting their territory? Can new structures make recommendations that nobody is obliged to act on?

If the answer to those questions remains yes, we have not gone far enough.

This Bill should leave South Africa with a police service that is harder to corrupt, easier to hold accountable and better able to use the policing capacity available across the country.

Anything less would be another opportunity lost.