DA to call on Portfolio Committee to formally recommend removal of Phiyega for her role in Marikana Massacre

27 January 2017

The DA will today write to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Police, François Buekman, to request that the Claasen report into the suspended National Police Commissioner, Riah Phiyega’s, fitness for office after her role in the Marikana Massacre, be urgently discussed.

The DA will then push for the Committee to formally recommend that Phiyega be immediately removed from office.

While the Committee is scheduled to receive a briefing from its researcher on the Claasen Report in March 2017, it is not soon enough. 34 mineworkers were needlessly killed and this needs to be answered for.

The Committee must discuss the report as a matter of urgency based on the weight of the damning findings on her role in the Marikana Massacre. The bloodshed of that tragic day could and should have been avoided.

Specifically, the report found that Phiyega should be removed from office because:

- Phiyega should reasonably have foreseen the tragic consequences of the decision to implement a “tactical option” at Marikana, failed to exercise her discretion and made no attempt to reduce the risks and consequences of her decisions;

- Phiyega tried to conceal the fact that there were two scenes by amending her report to the president on 16 August 2012 and her media statement of 17 August 2012 and this was not in keeping with the office should holds; and

- Phiyega’s evidence before the Farlam Commission into the Marikana Massacre was unsatisfactory and unbecoming of a civil servant in her senior position.

The DA welcomes the fact that the report has now finally been tabled in Parliament after we consistently called for this.

It is important, however, that Phiyega not be used as a scapegoat for those who bore the ultimate political responsibility for the tragic events at Marikana. The key political figures responsible – including Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, as well as then Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa, then Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu, and Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant – cannot be let off the hook. These senior political figures prioritised big business and financial self-interest ahead of the lives of ordinary South Africans who were exercising their constitutional right to protest.

Today we celebrate National Police Day, yet is it deeply concerning that senior leadership has been compromised.

Removing Phiyega from office would be a step in the right direction in ensuring that South Africans feel safe in their own homes and have faith that those in positions of leadership in the SAPS will tirelessly work to realise this.

Statement issued by Zakhele Mbhele MP, DA Shadow Minister of Police, 27 January 2017