Poor Riah Phiyega; she never was up to the job of being National Commissioner of the South African Police Service (SAPS).

On her appointment in 2012, I wrote: “All South Africans will pray that Ms Phiyega will prove to be up to the task. At least she’s not a politician. Our country cannot afford another failed Police Commissioner.” Her two predecessors, ‘General’ Selebi and ‘General’ Cele were politicians and both, to put it kindly, had integrity problems.

I also said, “We have one of the largest if not the largest centralised police force in the world. Managing that is a herculean task...but it surely also demands that the commissioner should know something about policing and fighting crime.”

I concluded by writing, “Surely among the senior ranks of the SAPS there was at least one man who possesses the necessary qualities, police experience, and personal authority that could have been appointed? If there is no such person in the SAPS, then that speaks volumes about our lack of success in fighting crime in our country. The rot must be even worse than we thought.”

On 11 March 2013 in The Citizen I wrote that she had failed and I recommended that the government should get rid of her, pay her out and be done with it.

On 9 September 2013 I suggested that General Phiyega should be “redeployed” to parliament as an ANC MP and that Lt-Gen Mzwandile Petros, retiring provincial commissioner of Gauteng should be appointed national commissioner. In Petros we had a senior, respected policeman with many years of excellent service and an unblemished record. I asked President Jacob Zuma to think about the suggestion.

And now? Judge Farlam in his Marikana Report called into question the competence of General Phiyega, her fitness for office, her judgment and her integrity. The enquiry can only have one outcome: she will be fired. It may be dressed up and she might receive a golden handshake as generous as the medals she wears after three years of service. But go she will; the third successive failed national commissioner.

Another target of the Farlam Report, Lt-Gen Zukiswa Mbongo, former provincial commissioner of North West Province retired immediately before its publication. Her fitness for office was questioned. Her career consisted of one year’s crime prevention duty and a succession of administrative postings before becoming a provincial commissioner. At least she had more experience than General Phiyega.

How on earth could these two officers be expected to be a success after being set up for failure? They are blamed for their deficiencies and their actions at Marikana – and rightly so. But who appointed them? What made President Zuma approve appointments of clearly inadequate persons in key roles with far-reaching consequences for his presidency and for our country?

Most people in South Africa are in favour of gender equality; after all, men and women are equal in terms of our constitution and equal dignity, recognition and reward are essential requirements if we are to wipe out centuries of discrimination. More than that, humankind for much of its history has wasted the talents of one half of human beings. Women are capable of filling any role just as capably as their male counterparts. But then they must be qualified for the particular appointment. If they are not, they will fail, just as an unqualified man would fail.

What person would appoint a male social worker with a subsequent rather undistinguished and short-lived career as an executive of Transnet and Absa to the post of national commissioner of the SAPS? If the answer is no-one would then why appoint a female with the same inadequate experience and qualifications and expect a miracle?

Unsuitable appointments made on gender grounds harm the process of gender transformation and do damage to the ideal of equality between men and women. In exactly the same way, appointments made on racial grounds, or political grounds, result in failure and setback. Instead of promoting equality, they retard it.

Transformation, as applied by this government, has a lot to answer for. Transformation to me should mean “make better.” As applied here, in too many cases it means “make worse.” People are appointed, whether qualified or not, to satisfy quotas or preconceived targets as well as to achieve total control by the ANC of every facet of national life. Transformation has become a catch-all often hiding favouritism, cronyism and nepotism.

Affirmative action has been perverted for the purpose of promoting the so-called “National Democratic Revolution,” itself a construct of the failed Euro-centric communist ideas of seventy or eighty years ago.

There is a definite place in South Africa for affirmative action if we are to achieve a greater measure of equality between the races and sexes. It should mean that if there are two or three reasonably equally qualified and suitable aspirants for a position, the one who is a woman, or the one who is black, should be appointed. To simply give the nod to an applicant whose real qualification is being a loyal cadre of the ANC is a recipe for decline and deterioration.

There ought to be no place for the type of appointment we see again and again: there is hardly a parastatal organ, a government department, parliament, the provinces and the city councils not burdened with far too many people unable to do the jobs required of them.

The present government has been in power for a generation; some would say that is far too long in a democracy. Unless the president and his party start focusing on making appointments of the best people for the job, irrespective of gender, race and politics, the people of South Africa might well before too long replace them with another government capable of arresting our national decline. Let’s see who gets the SAPS job.

Douglas Gibson, a former Opposition Chief Whip and former ambassador to Thailand, is a writer, political analyst and public speaker.

This article first appeared in The Star.