THE row between National Commissioner George Fivaz and Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi is farcical and – entertainment value aside – intolerable. Sympathy must lie to a limited degree with the minister at the moment, if only because we share his frustration at the continued incompetence of the police in dealing with crime.
Fivaz always looked like a makeshift appointment, plucked from some back-room of systems management and thrust into the frontline, not because he had any obvious leadership qualities, but because there was no one else of like seniority who was untainted by a security branch past.
His performance has been woefully inadequate, marked more by risible gimmick than by inspiration. Remember South Africa’s 10 000 “Most Wanted” he planned to round up in a month? Ha, Ha. The lie- detector programme to which all senior officers were going to subject themselves? Ho, Ho. The plan to hire a private security company to guard police headquarters because they were incapable of doing it themselves? That one had the audience bracing themselves for the punch-line and sure enough it came … when thieves trundled an 800kg automatic teller machine out of the Wachthuis.
It would all be side-splitting stuff, were it not for the destructive effects where our society is concerned. This week we have had the correspondent of that most prestigious of international finance magazines, The Economist, trussed up in her home at gunpoint. How’s that for a signal to foreign investors?
And then there is the haemorrhaging of some of the brightest and the best among young South Africans. Like one outstanding lawyer who is heading for Britain this month with her family after a hideously traumatic hijacking which saw gunmen taunting her with the life of her baby son. The incident took place in the driveway of the communications director of the South African Police Service, an otherwise delicious irony robbed of any humour both by the horror of the moment and the tragedy to South Africa represented by their departure.
But, if Fivaz is a natural target for frustrations over the crime problem, the truth is that no one is sure where responsibility truly belongs. What about Mufamadi himself? The minister says that if Fivaz chooses to go he will not stand in his way – a phrase redolent of lack of purpose. The only purposeful move we have seen Mufamadi make is his attempt to tie police commanders down to a “due performance” contract. That’s about as much help as Steve Tshwete demanding Clive Barker sign a contract guaranteeing Bafana Bafana will win the World Cup.
The answer to crime is not getting rid of the commissioner – at least not now. The answer lies in gaining an understanding of the problem. And we can see no better way to do that than to establish a full-blown judicial commission of inquiry into the police. It should be headed by a high court judge and assisted by foreign experts on policing. Together they can bring a much- needed, judicious and impartial eye to bear on the country’s most intractable problem.