SA's police are compromised and incompetent — perfect!

The scene was the Union Buildings in January 2000. A group of journalists was voraciously gorging on a sumptuous bouquet of snacks adorning the table in the corner. Hacks, underpaid and often unappreciated, can always be relied upon to be game for a free lunch. 

Jackie Selebi had just flown in from Cape Town in the wake of the announcement of his appointment as national police commissioner, and the gentlemen from the media — they were all men — were there to record for posterity his honeyed words. Always jovial, with his characteristic mischievous smile, Selebi was positively beaming.  

Amid the bonhomie, I tentatively ventured a rather inopportune question: “Will you be wearing a police uniform?”

“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head, “I’m not a policeman.”

It was obvious he hadn’t thought about it for, a few weeks later, Selebi’s enormous torso was bulking out of a slightly ill-fitting uniform. He had joined the club. 

The first civilian to head the police, Selebi was Thabo Mbeki’s seminal appointment as president. A big call. At the time, it was seen as bold, daring and evidently ground-breaking. With time, however, it proved outrageously reckless and disdainfully irresponsible. 

Selebi was seen as one of the rising stars set to take over from the generation that had seen off apartheid. In exile he sat on the ANC NEC and lectured at the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania. Once the ANC was unbanned, he took charge of repatriating its members. After 1994, he was appointed ambassador to the UN in Geneva. During his tenure, he chaired both the 1997 Oslo conference on the total ban on anti-personnel landmines and the 54th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights. As director-general of foreign affairs, he charmed journalists during the non-aligned summit in Durban in 1998 when, as government spokesperson, he was open, frank and approachable. 

He was obviously a safe pair of hands. But he was not a policeman; nor was he a miracle worker. Enjoying political cover, he immediately went to work, dismantling specialised investigative units such as those responsible for murder and robbery, Cape Town’s gang and taxi violence, the anti-corruption unit and more.

The decision led to the loss of expertise with dire consequences for the fight against crime. And when Vusi Pikoli, the national director of public prosecutions, resisted political pressure to stop an investigation into allegations regarding Selebi’s connection with, among others, convicted drug smuggler Glenn Agliotti, he was suspended by Mbeki and later dismissed.

The mess we’re now witnessing in the police — the incompetence, corruption, the dalliance with the underworld — was part of a deliberate ploy to create a malleable force. The trick seems to have worked

Gerrie Nel, Gauteng head of the Scorpions, was arrested at home by a posse of 20 policemen on trumped-up perjury charges. But all the attempts to protect Selebi proved fruitless in the end.

In January 2008, after eight years of turmoil, Mbeki finally put his man on an “extended leave of absence”. His experiment had failed. Mbeki was trying to save his own skin, having been accused of unleashing the Scorpions on Jacob Zuma while protecting allies like Selebi. The Scorpions unit itself had its fate sealed in Polokwane. 

Two years later, Selebi was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 15 years in prison, with the judge calling him “a person of low moral fibre” who had shown “complete contempt for the truth”.

Already ailing, he entered prison in a wheelchair. It was the final humiliation. “Selebi dons a new uniform”, screamed a cheeky newspaper headline.

He was paroled, and later died a broken man. 

Lessons were clearly never learnt. Selebi was succeeded by Bheki Cele, another loyal cadre who was to achieve the singular distinction of being fired for corruption by Zuma, of all people. Riah Phiyega, another party loyalist, warmed the seat for a while before she was sacked for incompetence. 

The police traditionally were never friends of the black community. They were the enemy, enforcers of all the laws meant to make their lives a living hell. You either hid or took to your heels when you saw a policeman approaching. Being body-searched in public was a daily humiliation. And of course, the police were at the forefront of the apartheid government’s ruthless campaign to smash those fighting for freedom — be it the massacre of peaceful demonstrators, the torture of political prisoners, detainees slipping on bars of soap or hanging themselves with their belts or handkerchiefs and others simply vanishing never to be seen again.

Many senior ANC members have been victims of such treatment or personally know comrades who mysteriously disappeared or were murdered by the system. 

And so, when they took power, they were nursing grievances or even hatred against the police, and their immediate inclination was to subdue the monster and bring it under control, rather than enhance its crime-fighting capacity. Partisans like Selebi were put in charge. And of course, such people, instead of being loyal to the institution, brought with them the values and cultures of their organisations. They were deployed, to use current lingua franca; and brought with them new tendencies, such as corruption.

It's surprising to hear people complaining that the police have been politicised. But what do they expect when politicians are imposed at the helm? The snake, after all, rots from the head.

The mess we’re now witnessing in the police — the incompetence, corruption, the dalliance with the underworld — was part of a deliberate ploy to create a malleable force. The trick seems to have worked. The police are so compromised and incompetent they can hardly make a dent on soaring crime or corruption, which seems to suit those in power just fine. 

Hopefully the Madlanga commission, once it’s over the tardiness and sheer incompetence on display this week, will be able to lay the blame at the feet of those who, given the solemn duty to ensure the security and wellbeing of the country's citizens, decided instead to further their partisan interests, thus giving free rein to criminality and lawlessness.