DA welcomes police committee investigation into new IPID Amendment Bill further limiting the Minister of Police’s powers
4 June 2020
The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes Parliament’s police portfolio committee’s decision to investigate our proposal to limit the Minister of Police’s powers to appoint the Executive Director of Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID).
In a letter to committee chairperson, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, I argued that IPID’s independence needs to immunised against political interference and that allowing the Minister of Police to nominate the Executive Director of IPID was counterintuitive and against the spirit of the judgment in McBride v Minister of Police and Another [2016]
While the McBride judgment ultimately limited itself to instructing Parliament to amend the IPD Act insofar as the Minister's powers to remove the Executive Director of IPID, it did make reference to the Minister’s powers to appoint and highlighted the importance of IPID’s independence.
“To my mind, this state of affairs creates room for the Minister to invoke partisan political influence to appoint someone who is likely to pander to his whims or who is sympathetic to the Minister’s political orientation. This might lead to IPID becoming politicised and being manipulated. Is this compatible with IPID’s independence as demanded by the Constitution and the IPID Act? Certainly not.”