Lt-Gen Shadrack Sibiya has finally made his much-awaited appearance before the Madlanga commission to answer to allegations that, essentially, he was what the young ones call an “ice boy” for a criminal cartel that sought to run both politicians and top cops.
Sibiya, on suspension from his position as deputy national commissioner of police, is still on the stand, so Hogarth must be circumspect. But one story Sibiya told the commission had Hogarth searching for his Atlas.
In trying to explain how, on a civil servant’s salary, he had a BMW 330i sedan, a Porsche Cayenne and a BMW X6 registered in his name, Sibiya described the day he was called to a crime scene in Tembisa, where a police officer had been killed.
He only had the BMW at the time. “But that car was giving me challenges because the policeman was killed and his body [was] dumped on top of a mountain, so I could not go up there or go deeper with the car because it was a very small car, and it was struggling,” Sibiya said.
Hogarth doesn’t claim to know every corner of the sprawling Ekurhuleni municipality, so he’d be grateful if Sibiya showed him the mountain in Tembisa that is so steep you would need to buy a Porsche 4X4 to get to the summit.
Have you driven a Ford lately?
The story doesn’t end there. After taking his sedan back to the dealership and being given the Cayenne in exchange, Sibiya came to realise in the fullness of time that maintenance for the Porsche was so expensive that taking it in for a service would bankrupt him. So the dealership made another exchange, replacing the Cayenne with an X6.
Whatever happened to the good old cheap, reliable bakkies our top detectives used to drive?
The cheek of it
Sibiya seems to have come to the commission determined that if he could not clear his name, he’d take everyone else down with him. Not only did he hurl mud at his chief accusers — KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, national commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola and crime intelligence boss Gen Dumisani Khumalo — but Sibiya also had much to say about acting deputy commissioner Lt-Gen Hilda Senthumule.
He told the commission that criminal suspect Vusi “Cat” Matlala had paid for “certain medical procedures” for Senthumule. Pressed for details, Sibiya said: “I think we had a witness here who spoke about certain senior managers who received BBLs [Brazilian butt lifts] and then, in my case, I said because I work with her [Senthumule] every day, I had to give her [days] off sometimes because she could not sit in the car, even in the office, because she could not work. She had to always be standing the whole day because she was not supposed to sit. I even advised her to work from home.”
In her response to Sibiya’s accusations, Senthumule said: “What I will say is that I have nothing to hide.”
The elephant in the room
After initially telling parliament he’d attend President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address, then skipping it without so much as an apology, former president Jacob Zuma made a surprise visit to the legislature’s public gallery this week.
Probably still peeved, that he had stood them up the week before, parliament’s head honchos appeared determined to ignore his presence. But the Nkandla Crooner’s friends in the EFF benches were having none of it. Joined by Zuma’s MK Party, they demanded that he be recognised.
The presiding officer, Refilwe Mtsweni-Tsipane, chair of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), wasn’t about to give in. S“Honourable member,” she told one MP, “there is no provision for me to agree with what you are saying.Please let’s proceed with the meeting of the house.”
But after a few minutes of opposition MPs shouting from the benches and consultationswith parliamentary officers, Mtsweni-Tsipane had second thoughts.
“Honourable members, before I call upon the next speaker, I would like to take this opportunity and acknowledge the presence of the former president of the Republic of South Africa, honourable Zuma. He’s here with us today,” she said.
What would it have hurt her to say that right at the start? Much ado about nothing, really.
I’ll just change the name, then
Poor NCOP. Very few take parliament’s second chamber seriously. Indeed, some cruel wags say the acronym stands for the national council of pointlessness.
Minister of sports, art & culture Gayton McKenzie — whose department has recently turned Graaff-Reinet into Robert Sobukwe Town, and East London into KuGompo City (formerly East London) — inadvertently underlined the point in his supposed contribution to the Sona debate.
“Chairperson of the NOCP,” he began, but could get no further due to loud jeering and heckling from MK Party and EFF MPs. The red berets, led by Leigh-Ann Mathys, urged McKenzie to recite the right name as if he was a schoolboy.
“It’s NCOP. Let’s do it together minister Gayton … N-C-O-P, N-C-O-P,” the EFF chorus sang.
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