News24 | ‘Do not forget to protect each other’: Deputy police minister at ambushed cop’s funeral

Constable Thapelo Kleinbooi Tlometsane, who died on patrol in Reiger Park, was laid to rest in Limpopo on Sunday.

Facebook/South African Police Service

• Constable Thapelo Kleinbooi Tlometsane, 29, was buried at Gedroogte Village in Limpopo on Sunday, a week after he and his colleague were ambushed on patrol in Reiger Park.
• Deputy Police Minister Polly Boshielo told mourners that killing a police officer is a crime against the State and urged officers to defend themselves when attacked.
• Acting national police commissioner Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane paid tribute to Tlometsane, saying the two officers “answered the call of duty”.

Constable Thapelo Kleinbooi Tlometsane, who was ambushed and killed alongside his colleague while conducting patrol duties in Reiger Park, Gauteng, was laid to rest in Limpopo on Sunday.

Tlometsane, 29, was with his fellow anti-gang unit member Constable Siphiwe Sibeko, 28, when they were shot and killed in the area on Friday, 7 August.

His funeral was held at Gedroogte Village, outside Zebediela, Limpopo.

Sibeko was buried in Springs, Gauteng, on Saturday.

Deputy Police Minister Polly Boshielo delivered the eulogy during Tlometsane’s funeral service.

Boshielo told mourners:

When you kill a police officer, you are killing or you are fighting with the State. (That) is a crime against the State and the State must stand the authority.

Boshielo called on police officers to defend themselves when being attacked.

“You have been given tools of work. Do not forget to protect each other. Never die with your tools of work. You are trained and empowered in terms of our Constitution to use your tools of work to serve, save and to protect lives.”

Boshielo said the killing of police officers should be “rare” and “not the norm”.

“We cannot surrender to criminals. The criminals must know that we are the State, and we must be able to show indeed that we are the State.

“As we remember Thapelo today, we don’t want his story to end with the circumstances of his death. We want to remember how he lived. We want to remember a churchgoer, a shy and intelligent young man. We want to remember a dedicated colleague who died on duty with his boots on.”

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Acting national police commissioner Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane also paid tribute to Tlometsane.

“Today, I stand before the Tlometsane family, relatives and friends, not merely as the acting national commissioner of the South African Police Service (SAPS). I stand here as the mother of a police family that stretches across all 1 165 police stations and embraces more than 180 000 men and women who wear the blue uniform of our nation.

“When a young police officer leaves home to serve and never returns, the pain does not stop at the doorstep of that family. It travels through the stations, through the units, through the offices, through the provinces and through the entire SAPS,” said Dimpane.

Dimpane said the two cops did what police officers were trained and swore to do.

She said:

They moved towards danger when others would have moved away from it. They answered the call of duty.

Twenty-three-year-old Regan Collis has been charged with the officers’ murders as well as the murders of two women, to whom the police were responding when they came under fire. He is due back in court next week to apply for bail.