MOGOENG J It follows from the judgment, read as a whole, and from this passage in particular, that this Court in K did not impose vicarious liability on the state only for the omission of its employees. Both the commission and the omission had an equally important role to play in finding the state liable for what had happened to the rape victim. [71] In K, the roles of the commission and omission were addressed in relation to the constitutional obligations of the employer. The commission is relevant to the determination of liability by reason of its intimate connection to the employment of the employee. More importantly, the employment provided the means to commit the crime.49 The omission is relevant to the extent that the police officials failed to protect the victim from harm. [72] In the context of vicarious liability, when a policeman rapes a woman instead of protecting her, his failure to protect the victim who has placed her trust in him is inseparable from the act of commission. They are two sides of the same coin and both stem from and revolve around the same incident. In this case they are both about the employer and the employee‘s constitutional obligations to safeguard the well-being of members of the public. [73] I do not understand the state‘s liability in K to have been based solely on the policemen‘s omission to the exclusion of their commission. I am therefore in respectful disagreement with the majority in the Supreme Court of Appeal with regard 49 See the discussion on the sufficiently close link at [74]-[82] below. 28