Parliament - Top police brass are in hot water for “lobbying” by backing SAPS national commissioner General Riah Phiyega’s fight to keep her job.
The parliamentary police committee wants to know why they strayed from their task of fighting crime.
On August 12, the nine provincial SAPS commissioners must answer MPs’ questions about why they publicly came out in support of Phiyega, a day after she gave President Jacob Zuma reasons why she was fit to remain in office, despite damning findings by the Marikana commission of inquiry.
This emerged at the start of Wednesday’s police committee meeting when the chairman, ANC MP Francois Beukman, made a hard-hitting statement.
“The statement of the said officers blurs the line between the role of civil servants/police officers and the executive, consisting of elected representatives,” he said. “While the office of the president is to consider the representations (made by Phiyega), it is not up to certain members of SAPS management to become involved in an overtly public discourse or to indirectly engage in lobbying on behalf of a certain party or parties who are subject of an official process.”
DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard, who this week asked the Presidency to dishonourably discharge Phiyega, and Freedom Front Plus MP Pieter Groenewald agreed the provincial police commissioners had involved themselves in politics.
“They are getting involved in politics. This is further proof the national (police) commissioner isn’t suitable for her position,” said Groenewald.
The Marikana commission of inquiry into the August 2012 police killing of 34 miners at Lonmin, and 10 deaths in the preceding week’s labour tension, recommended that Zuma institute a board of inquiry into Phiyega’s fitness for office.
This arose from a finding that she had misled the commission chaired by retired Judge Ian Farlam. “The leadership of the police, on the highest level, appears to have taken the decision not to give the true version of how it came about that the ‘tactical option’ was implemented on the afternoon of August 16 and to conceal the fact that the plan to be implemented was hastily put together,” the report said.
Releasing the commission’s report in June, Zuma also announced he had written to the national police commissioner and set a July 31 deadline.
A day after Phiyega submitted to Zuma her reasons why she should keep her job – apparently at 11pm that day – the board of commissioners, or the SAPS structure representing them, issued a public statement backing Phiyega and “her efforts in turning around the SAPS”.
It said it was concerned at “the prevailing unfair and largely negative attitudes” towards Phiyega. “The board has noticed a tendency to reduce everything, especially negative issues relating to policing, to the person of the national commissioner, as if the SAPS is a one-person show.”
On Wednesday, the parliamentary police committee took a dim view of the public statement.
It reminded the nine provincial commissioners of the SAPS code of conduct, which pledges the police to create a safe and secure environment for all, to prevent all acts that may threaten the safety and security of any community, to take into account community needs, and to uphold the constitution and the law.
The vision to reduce poverty and inequality by 2030 enshrines civilian control and oversight of the SAPS, and “the committee will not support a situation where this principle is compromised or watered down”, it said.
Political Bureau