Parliament, Cape Town – South Africa’s national police commissioner Riah Phiyega was spared an expected tongue lashing in Parliament on Wednesday and told her actions needed “serious reflection”.
Phiyega, whose job hangs in the balance after the Farlam commission of inquiry into the Marikana massacre recommended she face an probe into her fitness to hold office, landed in hot water with MPs on Tueday for sending a controversial SMS to an MP sitting on Parliament’s portfolio committee on police.
The SMS, sent to Democratic Alliance MP Dianne Kohler-Barnard, read: “I am black, proud, capable and get it clear you can take nothing from me, eat your heart out. I am not made by you and cannot be undone by you – Riah Phiyega.”
MPs from across the political divide blasted Phiyega for sending the SMS, expressing shock, with one even declaring it was “tantamount to mutiny”.
Phiyega later admitted to sending the SMS, with her spokesman Solomon Makgale calling it a “statement of self-affirmation”.
During Wednesday’s meeting, committee chairman Francois Beukman chose not to ask Phiyega to explain her actions, but said: “There was a acknowledgement, but I think we just need on that issue serious reflection by the accounting officer [Phiyega] and I’m just going to leave it there.”
Asked whether she thought her SMS appropriate, Phiyega told journalists: “I am not responding to that.”
During the same meeting, MPs ordered SAPS to hand over evidence it intended using to conduct an inquiry into a statement issued by police management and provincial commissioners supporting Phiyega.
During hearings last week, the commissioners were made to eat humble pie and apologise publicly for making “political statements”.
The commissioners told MPs Phiyega did not pressure them to issue the statement, but it appears the committee wants to test the veracity of their claims.
Beukman asked police management to supply the committee with, among others, electronic recordings of the July SAPS board of commissioners, which Phiyega chaired, and in which a decision was taken to issue the statement.
ANA