Captured Crime Intelligence appointment highlights need for National Policing Board

24 August 2017

The DA will call for Police Minister, Fikile Mbalula, to implement the National Development Plan (NDP) by urgently convening a National Policing Board to review all police senior management. He also needs to urgently facilitate the selection process for the appointment of a permanent National Police Commissioner through this mechanism.

Such a board is imperative following the latest questionable appointment, that of Zuma loyalist, Major General King Bhoyi Ngcobo, as the Acting Head of Crime Intelligence late yesterday. This is a puzzling appointment given the previous announcement that Acting Police Commissioner Lt. Gen. would directly oversee the Crime Intelligence Division, which was also confirmed at the Police Portfolio Committee yesterday.

It is shocking that a former Head of VIP Protection Services who is a close Zuma confidant and someone under a cloud of allegations of submitting a fake matric certificate to the South African Police Service (SAPS) has been entrusted with the leadership of our country’s Crime Intelligence division.

We condemn Ngcobo’s appointment in the strongest terms. For one of Zuma’s most trusted bodyguards to be elevated to lead South African Crime Intelligence shows just how far Zuma’s web of state capture continues to spread.

This highly suspect appointment follows a string of dodgy senior appointments in Mbalula’s department:

- Previous Crime Intelligence Head, Pat Mokushane, did not have security clearance and was doing business with the state;

A court ruled that Former Acting Hawks Head, Berning Ntlemeza, is “dishonest” and “lacking integrity” before he was even appointed, and that his appointment process was flawed; and

- Israel Kgamanyane, who was Acting Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) Head while Robert McBride was on suspension and led a purge of senior IPID staff, was transferred after McBride’s return to the Hawks in a possibly irregular process and now heads up the Special Investigations Department at the Hawks Headquarters.

The NDP proposal recommends specifically that, “A national policing board should be established, with multi-sectoral and multidisciplinary expertise. It should set standards for recruiting, selecting, appointing and promoting police officials and police officers. The board should also develop a code of ethics and analyse the professional standing of policing, based on international norms and standards.”

The DA will not stand by while questionable and often incompetent appointments continue to seriously compromise the senior police management in our country, from the Hawks to the IPID and now to Crime Intelligence. Fit-for-purpose and ethical police leadership is the very least that the people of South Africa deserve going forward.

Mbalula needs to ensure this by implementing the NDP proposal and facilitating the National Police Commissioner selection process urgently. He simply cannot drag his feet any longer waiting for the SAPS Transformation Task Team under the Deputy Minister’s office to finish its processes.

Issued by Zakhele Mbhele, DA Shadow Minister of Police, 24 August 2017