High Court vindicates DA's position on Dramat suspension

23 January 2015

This morning the DA's position that the Police Minister, Nkosinathi Nhleko, acted outside his authority when he suspended the Head of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations (the Hawks), Anwa Dramat, was vindicated by the North Gauteng High Court.

The North Gauteng High Court found that the decision by the Minister is "unlawful, invalid and is set aside. The decision to appoint an Acting Head is unlawful and invalid and set aside." The Court declared that the Police Minister is not empowered to suspend the head of the DPCI.

The Judge also ordered the Police Minister to pay all costs.

Indeed it has been the DA's contention that the Police Minister broke the law when he suspended Dramat as Hawks boss. On the 27th November last year - two months ago - the Constitutional Court ruled that the Minister of Police may not suspend the Head of the Hawks without consultation with Parliament. 

Additionally, sections 17DA(1) and (2) of the SAPS Act were declared "inconsistent with the Constitution and are declared invalid and deleted from the date of this order." 

The Minister knew he was not empowered to suspend the Head of the Hawks but did so anyway, in contravention of this Constitutional Court order.

It is curious that the suspension of General Dramat came the day after he focused in on the Nkandla files, which could implicate Jacob Zuma criminally. As the order for his suspension came directly after he called for the Nkandla files to be brought under the investigating arm he had created for high-profile cases, the order can only have come from Number 1 himself.

It would appear that Minister Nhleko has deliberately circumvented Parliament in order to remove a Hawks boss who acts independently and without fear or favour.

At the time of his appointment as Police Minister, the DA was cautiously optimistic that he would direct his efforts to restoring integrity to our criminal justice system and not be just another empty suit like his predecessor. Minister Nhleko has now revealed the true intentions of his mandate to be that of solely protecting President Zuma and his ever-deepening network of cronies from accountability.

This is the sort of banana republic abuse of power we have unfortunately come to expect from Zuma's ANC in government. 

The DA fought tooth and nail against the disbandment and replacement of the Scorpions with the Hawks for this very reason. It is this kind of gratuitous political interference that undermines the fight against priority crime.

After the long-standing state capture of the NPA, and the recent politically motivated suspensions at SARS, it would appear that our priority crime unit is the latest victim of this trend by a politically expedient ANC in government whose sole preoccupation seems to be to protect a dubious President and those close to him.

The DA commends the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Police, Francois Beukman for acceding to our request to have the Minister investigated for his conduct in this regard.

Parliament must, on 29 January 2015, do its part to hold the Minister of Police to account for circumventing it and for brazenly acting outside of his executive authority. The committee must decide if he is fit for office following this judgment.

It cannot be that the Minister of Police is allowed to break the law without consequence.

Statement issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard MP, DA Shadow Minister of Police, January 22 2015

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