Phiyega’s suspension: Zuma, the ball’s in your court
National Police Commissioner (NPC), Riah Phiyega, by telling President Jacob Zuma she needs more time and clarity before providing reasons why she should not be suspended, is playing games with the President – and, indeed with South Africa. This is not a new ploy. She used the same tactics in the Farlam Commission when she was drilled on Marikana and has dodged accountability in a similar manner during appearances before Parliament’s Police Portfolio Committee.
Phiyega’s latest move was to wait until the eleventh hour of her 26 August 2015 deadline and request further clarity as to why she shouldn’t be suspended. Instead of granting her this deadline, President Zuma should include this delaying tactic in her list of failings and contempt for her obligations and begin instituting the steps to have her disciplined and removed.
The President is empowered, in terms of section 84(2)(f) of the Constitution, to institute the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into allegations of misconduct and/or lack of fitness for the office. He must now be firm and go ahead with her suspension, to ensure that she doesn’t use her powerful position to influence the investigation or compromise its integrity.
Additionally section 207(1) of the Constitution vests authority in the President to summarily discharge her from office and he must now act to investigate her fitness or fire her once and for all. There is ample grounds for either remedy and he should not allow himself to be given the run-around by a police chief who has now employed ignorance as her latest delaying tactic.
The ordinary South African has come to expect a Police Commissioner who delays and obfuscates and does all to evade due accountability for her disastrous tenure as police chief over the last three years. There is no acceptable excuse she can possibly come up with to convince the President that she should not be suspended during the term of a Judicial Commission as it sits to examine her fitness to hold office.
Each month she “buys” herself, she earns an approximate R145 000 and moves closer to the golden egg so neatly granted to former Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi - which earned him an enormous monthly pension and full medical aid.
The DA does not take any pleasure in Ms Phiyega’s long list of failings because it is ultimately ordinary South Africans who have to live in fear while violent crime, under her watch, has risen in the last three years and sees approximately 47 people murdered every day. Her failure to arrest these problems, together with her role in the Marikana Massacre, are reason enough for her to be fired without delay.
The DA calls on the President to:
Rid this country of the embattled and controversial NPC, whose failings have been catalogued in the DA submission to him on the 04 August, and;
Put in her place a caretaker NPC, who will hopefully do less damage than the utterly inappropriate current Acting Head of the Hawks, a man damned in court and by those he is firing and side-lining, and finally; and
Ensure that candidates for the position undergo a panel interview and are chosen based on objective criteria.
If the President is to save South Africa from drowning in tsunami of crime and himself from the humiliation of third failed choice, he should implement processes which will ensure a professional police commissioner takes the helm, and not merely another Phiyega praise-singer.
President Zuma has the opportunity to salvage the legitimacy of the police for the sake of South African’s safety. The DA calls on him to restore legitimacy and public faith in the police because Phiyega’s continued tenure as the NPC will only lead to more scandals and the degradation of the policing system.
Issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard, DA Shadow Minister of Police, 7 September 2015
