The ANC has stuck to its guns that it no longer wants former Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) head Robert McBride to return to the institution.
The party used its majority in Parliament to adopt a report of the portfolio committee on police not to renew McBride’s contract, leaving the High Court the only option for the former Ipid boss.
A total of 172 ANC MPs voted in support of the report against five from the DA.
However, the North Gauteng High Court is yet to hear the application McBride lodged a few weeks ago.
Meanwhile, the Helen Suzman Foundation has filed another application in the Constitutional Court on processes followed in the appointment of the Ipid head. It does not want the minister of police to be involved in nominating the head of Ipid.
But in the tabling of the report in the National Assembly yesterday, parties were at each other’s throats on how the process was managed and dealt with.
Jerome Maake of the ANC defended the ruling party’s decision. He told the DA to stay away from ANC matters.
“We are dealing with a simple issue, which is complicated by people with hidden agendas. If it was a normal society, this would have been a normal labour relations issue,” said Maake.
“Both the minister of police and McBride are senior leaders of the ANC. The ANC has its own mechanism to deal with internal problems,” he said.
Maake said there was a breakdown of trust between Cele and McBride.
But the DA’s Dianne Kohler Barnard said the ANC had hung McBride out to dry.
She said the ANC had shamelessly attacked McBride during the hearings on the renewal of his contract and had assassinated his character.
“Our meetings were never about extending McBride’s contract, they were about discrediting McBride,” she said.
Kohler Barnard said just six months ago, the standing committee on public accounts had commended McBride for his work in fighting corruption in the police, but now the ANC was turning against him.
Nazier Paulsen of the EFF said they had backed the report on the removal of McBride. However, their support was for different reasons.
He questioned the support McBride had received from the Helen Suzman Foundation and his involvement with private investigator Paul O’Sullivan.
Nqaba Kwankwa of the UDM said this was the result of cadre deployment by the ANC.
He said it must be investigated whether Ipid was properly located in the police, when it was the minister of police who nominated a candidate to investigate the same police.