Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya
This week Judge Cornelis Claasen started the probe into national police commissioner General Riah Phiyega’s fitness to hold office.
President Jacob Zuma asked Judge Claasen, assisted by advocates Bernard Khuzwayo and Anusha Rawjee, to establish whether Phiyega and her leadership misled the Farlam commission by hiding the fact that they decided to implement the option to use maximum force – read kill if necessary – against the striking workers at the Rustenburg mine.
The meeting took place the night before the Marikana massacre of 34 mineworkers and the wounding of 78 others happened.
Judge Farlam has already said Phiyega did.
As things stand, Phiyega, former North West provincial commissioner Zukiswa Mbombo, provincial officers Major-General Ganasen Naidoo and Brigadier Ledile Malahlela could face criminal charges if the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) finds reason to do so.
As with the recently concluded arms deal commission, the state will once again spend millions of much needed cash on an outcome anyone with common sense can see from a mile away. Mangwashi Victoria Phiyega was never suitable to be a national police commissioner.
In fact, one way of establishing Phiyega’s fitness for office, which should have happened before she took the job, would have been to ask her if she thought she was up to it. If she said yes, then that would be ample proof she was not the woman for the job.
Phiyega could not possibly have been the best woman for such a unique job. She must have known this herself.
Her CV suggests she is no airhead. She is also an accomplished woman. Knowing what I know about our media, I am sure our investigative journalists would have turned every stone and opened every cupboard to find dirt and skeletons on her that made her morally and ethically unworthy of the position. They did not find anything.
I cannot think of any other job that requires one to be an expert in crime fighting, prevention and detection, be the CEO of a 190 000 workforce spread over 1 300 branches across the country, have the thick skin and a deaf ear for people who will blame you for every crime ranging from a cash van heist to when men rape their partners in their own homes and still have a rubber spine to bend to wherever the political powers that be want you to.
Phiyega should have simply said no. She did not and here we are. Absent from the dock, as it were, would be the person or persons who thought she was fit for office.
In that sense, the Phiyega inquiry is another case of selective accountability. A national police commissioner does not appoint herself.
That it was left to a police officer of two months’ experience of the job to make the biggest decision a law enforcement officer has had to make in post-apartheid South Africa is an indictment on those who appointed her.
I hope the inquiry will establish who appointed her and what they must have promised they will do to compensate for the obvious gap in the skills gap. They would have to explain how they saw the maverick appointment working out.
It is often pointed out, correctly so, that her predecessors, Bheki Cele and Jackie Selebi, had no policing experience when they were appointed. What these two had between them was the political gravitas and experience at working within a state machinery that invariably makes room for party considerations.
Incidentally, many of those who heap scorn on the appointments of Cele and Selebi have nothing but praise for the then minister of safety and security (as it was then known), Steve Tshwete, when he appointed SAB chairman Meyer Kahn to head the police service.
Kahn replaced General Georg Fivaz, the only career police officer to have been at the helm of the force (they are a force even if they call themselves a service). All that Fivaz had going for him was that he was a policeman by training. It was not good enough.
As with Cele, Selebi and now Phiyega’s appointments, the consensus was that the job required more than just a cop’s skills. It needed a tough business head as well as the respect of the political elites, hence Kahn’s optimistic but ultimately futile appointment.
Phiyega will probably be humiliated to the relish of her many foes she has made since accepting the job. Victims and family members of those massacred at Marikana will find some joy in at least one head rolling.
And as we talk about transformation in the workplace, we must also ask the SAPS and the government the more important question: what have they done in the 22 years of democratic government to ensure that they groom a policeman with the right political credentials, academic and business qualifications, and respect of their peers to stop the treadmill of national commissioners going nowhere?