For new National Commissioner of Police George Fivaz,=20 dealing with the past involves a retreat to the future.=20 He spoke to Mark Gevisser=20
IN private circles, George Fivaz likes to tell the=20 following story: when he was a young policeman and a=20 post in the Security Police was considered a sharp=20 career move, he applied to join up in South West=20 Africa. He was turned down because his father was a=20 member of the wrong clubs.
It’s a cocky story for an Afrikaner who has just been=20 appointed to one of the most powerful positions in the=20 land to recount: Fivaz is pointing, ironically, to the=20 paranoiac and arcane extremes of the institution to=20 which he has given his life; he is also acknowledging=20 that, given the history of this country, it is=20 circumstance and not conviction that has rendered him=20 the “clean cop” he publicly proclaims himself to be.
On many levels, he is an outsider. He may be a small- town Afrikaner (the surname, by the way, is Swiss) and=20 a devout Christian (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk),=20 but he was never part of the broeder elite that=20 clustered around the higher reaches of the Security=20 Branch. The impression one gets is that he kept his=20 head down and worked his way up the ranks, from a=20 constable in Bultfontein to the head of Efficiency=20 Services, the South African Police’s quality control=20 and restructuring arm.
Here, to his eternal good fortune, he came across=20 “lefties” doing research into police reform; people=20 like Janine Rauch and Etienne Marais. He was open with=20 them, and seemed to be passionate about restructuring.=20 When they were appointed as special advisers to Safety=20 and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi, he found himself=20 there too.=20
He was a junior general, barely known within the ranks.=20 In fact, if policemen knew him as anything, it was as=20 the commander who assisted Judge Richard Goldstone in=20 bringing the house down around their colleagues. He did=20 this unwittingly, by seconding two of his majors,=20 Eugene van Vuuren and Pieter du Plessis, to the=20 Goldstone Commission; these two brought “Agent Q” out=20 of the woodwork in a process that led, finally, to the=20 Eugene de Kok “third force” trial due to start later=20 this month. In fact, in his report, Goldstone made a=20 point of specifically thanking Fivaz.
That should have been the kiss of death within the=20 force, where Goldstone had replaced Joe Slovo as the=20 locus of evil in the Western world.
All of which makes Fivaz’s performance over the past=20 week all the more remarkable.
Fivaz was appointed to his new position as National=20 Commissioner of Police two days after a mutineering=20 policeman was killed at Orlando. On the very day of his=20 appointment, the SABC broadcast an expose into the=20 living conditions of Internal Stability Unit (ISU)=20 members literally penned in at Devon. In the course of=20 his first three days at work, at least three white=20 station commanders were forcibly ejected by their black=20 staff and wildcat strikes flared at at least seven=20 stations. Just to cap it all, the week ended with a=20 major political conflagration over the passing-out=20 parade at Ulundi.
The 49-year-old general can be forgiven for believing=20 that the spirits of security policemen past were raging=20 against him. And yet in his first three days he=20 brokered a deal with the Police and Prisons Civil=20 Rights Union (Popcru), set up bilateral union- management crisis teams, agreed to close down the ISU=20 Devon base, cancelled the kwaZulu passing-out parade,=20 permitted himself lengthy rambles on TV1 and Radio 702,=20 slammed racism, quoted chapter three of the=20 constitution, and didn’t seem to make a single enemy –=20 except for Inkatha, which has labelled him an ANC=20 stooge and vowed to go ahead with the passing-out=20 parade anyway.=20
That he is a decisive man is beyond doubt; whether he=20 has the political savvy needed in his new position will=20 be determined by how he negotiates this baptism by fire=20 in the next few days.
Sure, his enthusiasm to join the new order and his=20 unfamiliarity with its jargon occasionally means that=20 his tongue works a bit faster than his political=20 consciousness. “The police services,” he told me, “are=20 here to serve not only the privileged but also the=20 previously depressed majority.”
But even Popcru can barely mask its cooing. Senior=20 officials profess to be irritated with Fivaz’s initial=20 hard-line “we will not tolerate toyi-toyiing policemen”=20 tack, but acknowledge that, for the first time in the=20 police force, there is a boss who will listen to and=20 negotiate with the ranks.
Fivaz, says one of the people who played a part in his=20 appointment, is “open and flexible, so unlike other=20 police generals who see it as a loss of faith to change=20 their minds”. He is also a “team person, not in the=20 mould of the old-style go-it-alone generals”.=20
Fivaz is so committed to consultation and negotiation=20 that he places Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk on a=20 pedestal very close to God. He is, in fact, scandalised=20 by the death of a policeman at Orlando under whose=20 shadow he came to power: “It is absolutely unacceptable=20 for the ISU to intervene in an internal police labour=20 dispute. Everything can be resolved by negotiation, and=20 for as long as I am commissioner, that’s how it’s going=20 to be.”
Perhaps, compared to his primordial predecessors, Fivaz=20 is open and accessible. He may wear a suit and a tie=20 that is daring for Pretoria, rather than military drag,=20 and he may choose the title “commissioner” rather than=20 “general”, but he is a policeman through and through,=20 with all the attendant notions of duty and service, and=20 all the deep-rooted — if well-disguised — suspicions=20 of a journalist from the kind of disreputable=20 publication that would put a long nose on Adriaan Vlok.=20
Of course, it behoves him to say repeatedly that “the=20 truth and reconciliation commission will be wasting its=20 time if it calls me. I have nothing to tell them, I’m=20 completely clean.” He does not tell me the story about=20 his rejection by the security police. And he says, with=20 fervour, that “the culture of South Africa is a culture=20 of disrespect for fundamental rights. So we have to all=20 work together towards chapter three of the constitution=20
But as he talks, the complexities and ambivalences that=20 a “good cop” in South Africa had to contain seep out.=20 He expresses, for example, an outsider’s resentment of=20 the security police; one that may be linked to his=20 rejection. “They were a police service within a police=20 service, and never part of our subculture, our esprit=20 de corps … They were secret, undercover … All you=20 knew was that they were a mechanism of the state doing=20 the state’s bidding.”=20
One senses the frustration of a police inspector — for=20 that’s what he was — seeing things he instinctively=20 disapproves of but is unable to do much about. “I kept=20 on feeling that we needed to get back to the basic=20 principles of policing and that if we stuck to that, it=20 would be so much easier for police officers to=20 understand what it was they were supposed to do. Speak=20 to any policeman and you’ll see there was a crisis.=20 They would ask themselves: `Am I supposed to do=20 grassroots level police work, or am I supposed to do=20 all other kind of fancy footwork?’ It caused tremendous=20 stress and uncertainty.”
Perhaps he is talking, in the third person, about his=20 own dilemmas. And perhaps that he why he retreats,=20 quickly, to easier frames of reference: “We musn’t be=20 naive. During those years we had a real onslaught …=20 So you had mixed feelings.
“On the one hand, you resented it that the security=20 police were not helping you fight crime; on the other,=20 you felt that if they were taken off their duties, the=20 wall of the dam would break and you would get this=20 inflow of people killing people, a massacre in South=20
There is, for good people like George Fivaz, only one=20 way out of such difficult contortions: the retreat to=20 the future. “A clean break with the past” has become=20 his credo. “I have told my minister, and the president,=20 and the vice-presidents over and over again: I don’t=20 want to waste my energy focusing on the past. The past=20 will never again be important, except as a learning=20 school, a lesson of what we must never duplicate=20
Perhaps that’s the only position Fivaz can take,=20 presiding as he does over the dirtiest and most=20 murderous slagheaps of South Africa’s heritage. As the=20 truth commission swings into gear, he is going to find=20 himself saying it more and more.