DA welcomes overdue suspension of KZN Police Commissioner
19 May 2016
The DA welcomes the suspension of the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Mmamonnye Ngobeni, albeit more than a year overdue.
The DA will accordingly write to the acting National Police Commissioner, Kgomotso Phahlane, to get his commitment as to a date by which a fitness board of inquiry will commence, the timelines in this respect and to make public the terms of reference into such an inquiry. This is so we may satisfy ourselves that the investigation indeed takes into account all Ms Ngobeni’s transgressions.
Ngobeni’s suspension relates to her dodgy links to President Jacob Zuma’s son’s buddy, Thoshan Panday and his associates, who reportedly paid nearly R20 000 for her husband’s birthday party in 2010.
An affidavit filed in the Durban High Court in December 2014 by then KZN Hawks Head, Johan Booysen, cited an independent forensic audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers which showed a “possibly corrupt relationship” between Ngobeni and Panday.
Following that was the institution of an IPID investigation into Ngobeni’s culpability in financial irregularities in the SAPS’s KZN Office involving R60 million, which the DA originally requested. We have no doubt that this action, in part, informed the witch-hunt against IPID Executive Director, Robert McBride.
The suspension of Ngobeni is a laudable step towards ensuring accountability for her alleged misconduct and in so doing, restoring some semblance of integrity within the SAPS.
That it has taken more than a year for action to be taken after her suspected involvement in supply chain corruption in the KZN SAPS points to the depths to which accountability of high-ranking officials within our police service has sunk and protected because of their closeness to the Zuma family or President Zuma himself.
The DA has long held that the root of the crisis in our police service lies in ineffective, self-interested and callous SAPS senior management that has the wrong priorities.
Our police management should be beyond reproach and set the example for ethical leadership that exemplifies the highest standards of corporate governance and policing if we are to win the war on crime that continues to affect people in every corner of South Africa.
South Africans deserve to feel safe in their own country and to have faith that the management of the SAPS are committed to the fight against crime. Unfortunately this is not the case.
On 03 August 2016, South Africans have an opportunity to vote in the Local Government Elections for DA governments who will serve the people of our country and not compromise the fight against corruption for their own selfish gain. South African’s deserve a SAPS leadership that does not put its own egotistical interests above the needs of the millions of South Africans who so desperately need change - change that stops corruption and provides better services for all.
Issued by Zakhele Mbhele, DA Shadow Minister of Police, 19 May 2016
