Bheki Cele (right) and Jacob Zuma (left) share a relationship dating back to the 1980s
Former president Jacob Zuma has gone to court to request that the order for his imprisonment be stayed, effectively halting its implementation until the Constitutional Court hears the matter on 12 July.
For now, the agreement to hear the matter halts the process of Zuma going to prison, and, to an extent, takes some pressure off the security establishment, which appears to have been caught off guard by the decision of the court to jail Zuma for 15 months.
In terms of the majority judgment by the apex court, handed down on Tuesday, the national commissioner of police, Kehla Sitole, and the minister of police, Bheki Cele, have three days from Sunday to affect Zuma’s arrest should he fail to abide by the court order.
Cele, who was appointed as police minister in 2018, in February visited Zuma at his home at Nxamalala village, near Nkandla to try to convince him to abide by the court’s order and honour a summons to return to the Zondo commission to face questions about his alleged role in state capture.
On Tuesday, speaking during a briefing on the new Covid-19 regulations, Cele would not be drawn on what would happen should Zuma fail to present himself to the police in Nkandla or Johannesburg.
Cele said the police would enforce the warrant within the prescribed period in terms of the court order, but that the matter was not yet “on the table”.
By Friday the Westville Correctional Services in Durban was chosen by the constitutional court as the place where Zuma would spend his sentence.
There is a level of irony involved in Cele being the one called on to arrest Zuma. The two men share a political relationship dating back to the 1980s, when Cele became involved in ANC underground activities. At the time, Zuma headed the ANC political/ military structures operating in KwaZulu-Natal and Swaziland.
Cele was arrested when he was infiltrated back into the country in 1987 and jailed, serving a sentence on Robben Island until his release in 1991.
Cele was appointed to the ANC interim leadership in KwaZulu-Natal — along with Zuma, who had returned from exile. They worked in the peace structures created by the National Peace Accord to try to end the conflict between the ANC and its allies, Inkatha and the apartheid security forces.
The two served together in the ANC provincial executive committee elected in 1994 and in the KwaZulu-Natal cabinet. Zuma was appointed as MEC for economic development, while Cele, who also led the ANC’s powerful eThekwini region, became MEC for public safety and transport.
They were both central to the ANC’s growth in KwaZulu-Natal,which had previously been dominated by the ., with the party winning control of KwaZulu-Natal in 2004.Inkatha Freedom Party the province.
When Zuma, who became deputy president in 1999, was recalled by then president Thabo Mbeki in 2005 over the conviction of his financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, for corruption over payments to Zuma, Cele — and the eThekwini region — rallied in his defence.
The eThekwini region was to play a crucial role in Zuma’s successful bid for the ANC presidency in Polokwane in 2007, swinging delegates from the rest of the province in his favour.
In 2009 Zuma appointed Cele, then one of his key loyalists, as police commissioner. But, by November 2011, Zuma had suspended Cele on the basis of a report by the public protector into two contracts to lease the police service’s offices from property magnate Roux Shabangu.
In June 2012, Zuma fired Cele, quoting the findings of a review board appointed to investigate the claims. Zuma said he had decided to “release General Cele from his duties”. He replaced Cele with the ill fated Riah Phiyega, who was herself axed as commissioner over the 2012 Marikana massacre.
The move preceded the arrest of General Johan Booysen, the head of the Hawks in KwaZulu-Natal, in August 2012 on fabricated murder and racketeering charges in the so-called Cato Manor “death squad’’ case.
Booysen had arrested Toshan Panday, a business associate of Zuma’s son Edward, for corruption over a police accommodation tender for the 2010 World Cup.
Cele raised eyebrows during early court appearances by Booysen and his men — against whom charges were withdrawn — by turning up at the court to show solidarity with them.
Cele took his dismissal by Zuma on review in the high court, which, in 2019, set aside the decision to fire him on the grounds that it was “irrational, biased, lacked credence and defied logic”.
Now he is the man that the constitutional court has called to ensure that his once comrade turned nemesis must be jailed if his court application fails.
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