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The presidency has declined to comment on the position of suspended National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega following a City Press report that the Claassen Inquiry found she was unfit to hold office.
The presidency said it had “no knowledge of the report referred to in the media reports” and would therefore not comment.
“The presidency will inform the public as soon as the report is received by President Jacob Zuma,” presidency spokesperson, Bongani Ngqulunga, said.
City Press reported yesterday that the board of inquiry into Phiyega’s fitness to hold office found she was not fit to hold office and should be dismissed.
The inquiry concluded on June 3 and the report was finalised on November 13.
City Press reported that the findings hadn’t been communicated to President Jacob Zuma because the presidency still had to provide a date on which the board could brief him about its findings and recommendations.
Phiyega only became aware of the findings “informally” – and she was planning to have the commission’s report reviewed in court.
Phiyega wrote to the board’s secretary, Advocate Liza Tsatsi, asking that the board comply with the South African Police Service Act, which stipulates that at the conclusion of an inquiry the board must submit its report to the president, the national police commissioner, the commissioner concerned and the relevant parliamentary committee.
“In light of the above, kindly furnish us with the copy of the report,” Phiyega wrote.
City Press has learnt that Tsatsi did not respond formally to the letter, but informed Phiyega that it would be unfair for her to receive the report while “other parties involved” had not yet received it.
The Democratic Alliance will write to the chairperson of the portfolio committee on police, François Beukman, to urge that the request for the finalised report from the Claassen Inquiry is tabled before Parliament.
“While the DA welcomes the finding that Phiyega is unfit for office, as we have long and consistently argued, we maintain that the terms of reference of the inquiry should have been widened to include all of Phiyega’s failings during her tenure so that the premise for arriving at this accurate conclusion was a comprehensive one. The DA made submissions last year to President Zuma to this effect,” said the party’s police spokesperson, Zakhele Mbhele.
The Congress of the People said that Phiyega must not be made the scapegoat to cover up for senior leaders.
“We are very disturbed by the commission’s report findings, declaring that Phiyega is unfit to hold that position. We don’t believe it’s fair to her that she must shoulder all the blame for what happened at Marikana where 34 miners were massacred,” said spokesperson Dennis Bloem.
“There are very worried people who want to see her gone, but we know that her fierce determination to protect her name is making the government very nervous and anxious.
“All of us know that the massacre at Marikana was too big to lay at the door of one person. It is common knowledge that Cyril Ramaphosa was in close touch with Minister Nathi Mthethwa in the days leading up to the massacre ... If the government’s role in the massacre is revealed, the damage it will suffer will be immense.”
Bloem believed that Mthethwa and Ramaphosa must not only be declared unfit to hold their positions but must be charged for the massacre at Marikana.
It found that she failed to disclose that there were two crime scenes at which the 34 mine workers were gunned down in August 2012 – Scene 1, at which some of the mine workers were killed; and the infamous Scene 2, where police pursued and shot fleeing mine workers, many of whom were killed while hiding behind rocks.
Zuma had asked the Claassen Board of Inquiry to investigate whether Phiyega misled the Marikana Commission by hiding a decision to implement a “tactical option”, taken at the national management forum meeting of senior police the day before the massacre.
He also asked it to investigate whether a catastrophic result should have been foreseen, and whether Phiyega’s speech to police officers the day after could have been construed as permission to frustrate the Marikana Commission’s work.
The board was also to investigate whether Phiyega lied about Scene 2, and about the police having acted in self-defence.
A board insider told City Press this week that Phiyega’s case at the inquiry was badly damaged by her refusal to submit to cross-examination.
The case against her was also significantly strengthened by Claassen’s ruling that witnesses, who had not testified at the Marikana Commission before Judge Farlam, could be called to give evidence.
The most damning testimony, a board insider said, came from former police spokesperson Brigadier Lindela Mashigo, who told the inquiry that Phiyega instructed him to present the massacre as one incident and not two, and also to say that the police had acted in self-defence.
The board insider told City Press that closing arguments by evidence leader Ismail Jamie were also “very strong and convinced the judge and his assistants”.
“This was a specific inquiry focussing on the conduct of the national commissioner, precisely to get to the bottom of this sort of thing … and she chose not to testify. And we say, that says it all,” he said.
