Marikana: Phiyega Inquiry a step closer to justice for fallen mineworkers
22 September 2015
The DA welcomes President Jacob Zuma’s announcement that he has, at last, decided to institute a Fitness Board of Inquiry- in terms of Section 9(1) of the SAPS Act- into the embattled National Police Commissioner (NPC), Riah Phiyega, and her conduct that led to the deaths of 44 mineworkers at Marikana on 16 August 2012.
This is one step closer to attaining justice for the victims and families of those who were brutally massacred by a SAPS acting with lethal force on that fateful day. Ms Phiyega, who bares ultimate responsibility for SAPS operations, must be disciplined and ultimately fired.
The President also stated that he has “accorded General Phiyega a further opportunity to make representations by the 28th September as to why she should not be suspended pending the final determination of her fitness to hold office.”
We contend that he should not wait for any such representations to be made and she should be suspended immediately so she does not use her powerful position to tamper with the Inquiry as the NPA found she had already done in the Arno Lamoer case. That she isn’t suspended already is inexplicable.
The DA also notes the terms of reference are only limited to her conduct that led to Marikana. The DA would have hoped that the terms of reference could include her entire career as Police Commissioner as outlined in our submissions to the President on 04 August 2015.
In any event, this is a step in the right direction because her conduct leading up to and throughout this debacle has been nothing short of disgraceful and a slap in the face of many devastated families who lost their loved ones and breadwinners.
The Farlam Commission of Inquiry set up by the President in accordance with Section 84(2)(f) of the Constitution found:
SAPS’s evidence before the Commission showed that senior SAPS officials acting under the National Commissioner’s supervision and seemingly sharing the National Commissioner’s views, took irrelevant political considerations into account in conducting operations at Marikana.
The Commission’s determination was that the National Commissioner herself participated in inappropriate discussions about political considerations regarding the operation.
The National Commissioner’s assertion during her testimony that she was unable to recall her conversation with the North West Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Zukiswa Mbombo, was both unsatisfactory and unconvincing.
The National and Provincial Commissioners had seen the representations made by the SAPS prior to being submitted to the Commission and they would have been well aware of some of the omissions and misleading information contained therein.
The Commission itself stresses National Commissioner Phiyega’s inexperience in policing when it states that“The National Commissioner…had been appointed to head the SAPS just a few months earlier, after receiving professional training in social work and having had a professional career focused largely on human resources and on the management of state enterprises. She had no policing expertise and experience whatsoever.”
While we agree that Ms Phiyega should bare a large part of the responsibility for her disastrous tenure as the NPC, so too must those who bore the ultimate political responsibility such as the then Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, and former Minister of Mineral Resources, Susuan Shabangu, who now appear to be getting off scot free allowing Ms Phiyega to be the scapegoat for an operational and political breakdown that killed 44 South African exercising their constitutional right for better living standards.
Statement issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard MP, DA Shadow Minister of Police, 22 September 2015
