MPs fume at top cop ‘side issue’ jibe
18 April 2012 at
13:53pm
By: GAYE DAVIS and DEON de LANGE
MPs are steaming over a self-serving statement issued on behalf
of acting national police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi
that tries to put a positive spin on the grilling he and top officials received
in Parliament on Tuesday – and which refers to current scandals gripping the
SAPS as “side issues”.
Stunned members of the National Assembly’s police oversight
committee listened as chairwoman Sindi Chikunga read out the statement late on
Tuesday.
Earlier, Mkhwanazi – accompanied by more than a score of senior
officials – had faced robust questioning from MPs.
Chikunga prefaced the meeting by raising the allegations
swirling around suspended KwaZulu-Natal Hawks boss, Major-General Johan
Booysen, and crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli, who was recently
reinstated after charges against him – including murder and corruption – were
controversially withdrawn.
“When the most senior people in the police are being alleged –
suspected – of being involved in criminal conduct such as this, what is this
supposed to mean?… Who must we trust? Who are you?… Do we really know?” she
asked Mkhwanazi.
He and members of top SAPS management were appearing before the
committee to brief it on the performance plan and budget for the new financial
year.
During the meeting, Chikunga noted that the media was
responsible for bringing to light many of the facts in cases against senior
cops.
“I’m worried about what this means about the senior managers in
this department, who are not able on their own to pick up these matters and
correct them,” she said.
In implied criticism of Chikunga, Tuesday’s police statement
said the ANC MP had “opened a floodgate of questions” and given committee
members “an opportunity to hammer more nails to the very same issues (sic),
throwing a string of questions to the acting national commissioner”.
Mkhwanazi had “emerged and appeared confident” when responding
to “the heavy line of questioning by the oversight committee”, said the
statement, issued by Mkhwanazi’s spokeswoman, Nonkululeko Mbatha.
“The oversight committee meeting, however, started with side
issues within the current affairs environment.”
An angry Chikunga said she had no problem with the police
issuing a statement suggesting Mkhwanazi was confident in his answers, but the
matters raised by the committee “were definitely not ‘side issues’ “.
“Even though we were going to deal with budget issues, how can
we begin to talk about budgets when these allegations are in the public domain?
“How can we even begin to talk about fighting crime when these
issues are out there?”she asked.
Some of the serious allegations levelled against senior members
of the police service “manifest a flagrant violation of the moral integrity
expected of police members, or conduct unbecoming of a police member”. she
said.
Angry DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard said she had never known the
police to issue a pre-emptive statement on what had taken place in a
parliamentary committee meeting before.
“I am furious they (the SAPS) now feel they can put out media
statements that are a total whitewash of the committee meeting,” Kohler Barnard
said. “It’s as if we have no right, as public representatives, to ask questions
about what has been all over the front pages of the newspapers…”
MPs wanted to know what was being done about allegations that a
so-called “hit squad” was operating from the Cato Manor offices of the Durban
Organised Crime Unit, under the ultimate command of Booysen. Mkhwanazi has
since shut down the unit and Booysen was suspended.
Mkhwanazi told MPs on Tuesday that Booysen was still under
investigation.
Chikunga also touched on allegations that Mdluli had raided the
police’s secret service account to pay for cars, travel and luxury holidays at
taxpayers’ expense. Mdluli is also implicated – in an internal police
investigation report – of instructing subordinates to employ 23 members of his
family members in the police’s covert agent programme.
“(We are talking about) the head of intelligence. Really, we are
talking about intelligence… Our hope for the prevention of crime in this
country – our hope for fighting crime – is alleged (to be engaged) in this very
serious misconduct,” the exasperated chairwoman added.
Mkhwanazi also provided some insights into his policing
philosophy when he told the committee that, were it not for laws prohibiting
“torture and the like”, his officers would have “found ways” to make Constable
Francis Rasuge’s murderer tell them where her body was buried.
Rasuge’s body was recently found buried at the home of William
Nkuna, the man convicted of her murder in 2004. -Political Bureau
