In turn, one SAP brigade served with the 2nd Infantry Division of the South African Army in North Africa during World War II.

[4][5]: 11 When the conservative National Party edged out liberal opponents in South Africa's elections in 1948, the new government enacted legislation strengthening the relationship between the police and the military.

Among the SAP's spies during the apartheid era was the infamous Craig Williamson and his best-known female recruit Olivia Forsyth.

Formed following a need to defend the border between South Africa and Rhodesia during the Rhodesian Bush War, the Special Task Force was unofficially founded in 1967, and began to be trained to use advanced tactics, such as survival and bush skills, to carry out COIN operations, and drastically reduce police casualties – this unit was nicknamed 'the Bliksems'.

By 1975, support for creating the Special Task Force reached the Bureau of State Security, following both the Fox Street Siege, in which the police were unable to deal with a hostage crisis at the Israeli embassy in Johannesburg, and the outbreak of the conflict in South West Africa, stretching the demand of COIN operatives.

The unit consisted of 41 divisions, and proved invaluable to preventing potentially thousands of killings during major political violence.

[24][25] During South Africa's rule under apartheid, the SAP operated to quell civil unrest amongst the country's disenfranchised non-white majority.

Beyond the conventional police functions of upholding order and solving crime, the SAP employed counterinsurgency and intimidation tactics against anti-apartheid activists and critics of the white minority government.

[26] On 21 March 1960, SAP officers in the Transvaal township of Sharpeville opened fire on a large anti-apartheid protest outside of the local police station, killing 69 demonstrators and injuring 180 others.

[27] In 1983, the SAP formed C1, a counterinsurgency unit commanded by police colonel and former Koevoet operator Eugene de Kock.

It functioned as a paramilitary hit squad,[28] capturing political opponents of the National Party government and either "turning" or executing them.

C1 was also responsible for several fatal bomb attacks against anti-apartheid activists, including members of the African National Congress.

Another reserve (volunteer) force was established in 1966, consisting of unpaid, mostly White civilians willing to perform limited police duties.

A youth wing of this reserve force reported that it had inducted almost 3,000 students and young people to assist the police during the late 1980s.

Even with training courses extended to three months, their often brutal and inept performance contributed to the growing hostility between the police and the public by the late 1980s.

After President Frederik Willem de Klerk lifted the ban on black political organisations and released leading dissidents from prison in 1990, he met with the police and ordered them help end apartheid, to demonstrate greater political tolerance, and to improve their standing in black communities.

[32] As the apartheid era ended, these programs were restructured to emphasise racial tolerance and respect for basic human rights.

The new CCI, with responsibility for reversing the rising crime rate, combined the intelligence and operational resources of the security police with the anticrime capabilities of the CID.