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The DA welcomes the decision by the Portfolio Committee on Police to have the Minister of Police, Nathi Nhleko, appear before the Committee to brief it on the suspension of the Executive Director of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), Robert McBride, and the rationality of that decision.

Should the Minister’s briefing not satisfy the Committee, I and DA Shadow Minister of Police, Dianne Kohler Barnard MP, will move that a full parliamentary inquiry be instituted to probe the chaos that has ensued at both the Hawks and the IPID at the Minister’s hands.

This follows reports alleging that Minister Nhleko will grant a warrant for the arrest of Mr McBride for the rendition of Zimbabweans in 2010. This is bizarre considering that the Minister originally claimed, without a shred of evidence, that only the departed Hawks Head, Anwa Dramat, and suspended Gauteng Hawks boss, Shadrack Sibiya, were the chief proponents of these renditions.

Minister Nhleko alleged, last month, that McBride doctored the IPID’s report into the illegal renditions of Zimbabweans in 2010 to shield the Hawks boss from any involvement in wrongdoing. Still weeks after he made these utterances he has not presented an iota of prima facie evidence to support this serious claim. He has instead suspended McBride because the report on which he claims to have based the purge at the Hawks was not to his liking.

The Minister has clearly got himself into a bind and cannot get his story straight. He is trying everything to make a problem he created go away. Parliament must step in and get to the bottom of this chaos to help restore law and order within the Police Ministry.

The DA is of the belief that this is a desperate last-ditch attempt by Minister Nhleko to throw the scent off himself and his gross misconduct in his handling of the Hawks debacle and to supress the IPID Head from revealing the truth of the mess that the Minister has made at these critical crime-fighting institutions.

The Police Minister’s desperation to absolve himself from his clearly unlawful conduct by violating the November Constitutional Court ruling that he has no grounds to suspend the Head of the Hawks without consultation with Parliament has cost Dramat his job and is now set to cost McBride his job too, perhaps putting him behind bars as well.

The Minister is set to abuse his power once again by arresting McBride and acting in bad faith in an effort to discharge his insidious political agenda.

The Minister’s conduct in this regard is manifestly irrational and Parliament’s silence cannot continue. The Police Committee must recommend that this one-man-wrecking-ball of a Minister be fired by President Jacob Zuma.

Issued by DA