Durban – The country’s police watchdog has slammed what it said was “spurious” testimony given by a community activist at the ongoing Moerane Commission investigating political violence in KwaZulu-Natal.
The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) said that human rights activist Vanessa Burger – who testified under oath at the commission on Monday about violence at uMlazi’s notorious Glebelands Hostel – had previously interfered with evidence and obstructed investigations.
“Reports of Burger’s testimony are of concern as they allege that the Ipid has not done anything to investigate allegations of police misconduct and criminality,” said Ipid national spokesperson Moses Dlamini in a statement on Wednesday.
Burger has been researching violence at Glebelands for years.
She works with other activists at the hostel and hostel residents. In her testimony on Monday, she alleged that Ipid in KwaZulu-Natal was dysfunctional, incompetent and corrupt and was a stumbling block in getting to the root cause of violence in the province and at the hostel.
She further accused Ipid of failure to collect technical reports from pathologists, turning a blind eye to police supplying firearms at the hostel and not holding ID parades to identify suspects of violence if they were police officers.
“The Ipid is not aware of Burger having visited the Ipid KwaZulu-Natal office to witness for herself the dysfunction which she alleges has beset it. The Ipid has hosted Burger’s colleague, Ms. Mary de Haas [who earlier this year testified at the commission] and given her a complete briefing concerning its investigations. There are also numerous emails to De Haas concerning her enquiries into the aforesaid investigations,” said Dlamini.
“Postmortems in a number of cases investigated by the Ipid, in which the violence monitors have an interest, were inconclusive and required toxicology and histology examinations to be done. It is a fact known to everybody except Burger, that there is a backlog in the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), which is beyond the control of the Ipid. Apart from the Ipid following up on many occasions, the DPP has at the request of the Ipid, written to the FSL to prioritise the analyses, to no avail,” he said.
Dlamini said Burger had also failed to provide Ipid with evidence allegedly implicating a policeman being involved in the supply of weapons to “warring factions” at the hostel and no information or response to the requests was ever received.
“In one case, Burger picked up evidence from the scene and when she was requested to hand-over the evidence, she gave Ipid investigators the run-around,” said Dlamini.
“After the evidence was handed-over, Burger was requested to provide a chain statement. It took months for the statement to be obtained after Burger was informed that this kind of conduct could amount to defeating the course of justice as Burger, who is a civilian, was not entitled to have evidence in her possession.”
He said that in instances of ID parades not being held, it was important to note that violence monitors (such as Burger and De Haas) had called for units from outside the province to be utilised, “and when these units are deployed, it is difficult to trace the police officers involved,” he said.
“The violence monitors have always insisted that Ipid investigators go through them but they have done nothing, if anything at all, to ensure the necessary cooperation by such witnesses,” said Dlamini.
“Burger was asked to locate a particular witness who had relocated to another province and was thus unreachable. An Ipid investigator travelled from Durban to Gauteng to interview the witness, but when he got there, the witness was unreachable again. No further assistance was provided by Burger,” said Dlamini.
Speaking to ANA on Wednesday morning, Dlamini said while Ipid had not ruled out pursuing charges against Burger for bringing the organisation into disrepute at this stage the aim was to "clear up the myths she had perpetuated about the Directorate”.
He did not say if Ipid would testify before the commission.