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Police Minister Bheki Cele.
- The police portfolio committee is considering amending the IPID Act to bring municipal law enforcement agencies into its purview.
- This, after a heated committee meeting in which Police Minister Bheki Cele and the district attorney disagreed on whether there was oversight over the Cape Town City Police Unit.
- This is part of a long-running tug of war on policing in the DA-run city and province.
The portfolio committee on the police is considering amending the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) Act to entrust the police watchdog with monitoring metropolitan law enforcement agencies as well.
This was one of the few concrete results of a heated meeting on Friday in which the city of Cape Town, the police, IPID and the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) were summoned to discuss the incident involving members of Cape Town law enforcement in Khayelitsha, where Bulelani Qolani was forcibly removed from his hut naked.
However, within the committee a long-standing power struggle developed between the DA-led city and the ANC national government over surveillance.
FF Plus leader Pieter Groenewald commented that the meeting had “many political overtones”, with the DA on one side and the ANC on the other.
There were several issues where the information provided by the City and the police was inconsistent.
Among them was whether there was oversight over city law enforcement. According to Police Minister Bheki Cele, problems with the police in the Western Cape do not come from the subway police, but from the city’s law enforcement officers.
“The problem is not an oversight,” he said.
While the metro police were accountable to IPID, law enforcement officers were not.
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However, DA MP Andrew Whitfield said Cele “repeated a number of falsehoods”.
“There is a civilian oversight committee that oversees the enforcement of the law in Cape Town,” said Whitfield.
Committee chair Tina Joemat-Pettersson, who had to hold tight to the reins during the meeting, said: “As a committee, we will correct what is wrong. The amendment of the IPID Act is a priority for this committee.”
She suggested that the City integrate its law enforcement units with the metro police while the legislation is amended.
The committee resolved in July to amend the IPID Act to strengthen Parliament’s position in appointing the executive director of IPID over that of the minister of police.
This, after a contentious process of appointment of Jennifer Ntlatseng as executive director of IPID, in which Cele broke the law for months. Ntlatseng made her first appearance before the committee on Friday.
The city had to be called to the meeting after it declined an earlier invitation from Joemat-Pettersson.
In concluding his presentation, Cape Town Mayor’s Safety and Security Committee Member JP Smith said the City was aware that it had been summoned to appear before no fewer than four portfolio committees in the last three months at least six times and that no ANC-controlled municipality had dealt in this way, even though the issues the City was questioned about applied equally to them.
ANC MPs Kebby Maphatsoe and Princess Faku, and Joemat-Pettersson opposed this.
Joemat-Pettersson said the City was not selected: the committee had made supervisory visits to the province and received complaints from the community, they charged.
I would also call other municipalities. SAHRC Commissioner Chris Nissen also objected to Smith’s criticism of the commission’s perception of fairness.
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He also said that it was not true that they were pointing to the city of Cape Town.
“Across the country we treat everyone the same.”
Referencing the Qolani incident, Smith informed the committee that they often experienced people stripping when law enforcement took action against them.
They have learned to deal with it better and brought blankets to operations to cover them, so that their dignity was not contested when they undressed.
Police in the Western Cape had been the bone of contention since the district attorney came to power in the province in 2009.
In the run-up to last year’s elections, the district attorney campaigned for the return of police powers, while Cele and the ANC had long advocated for a single police force, implying the dissolution of the agencies. Metro police officer in the national police force.
