Northern Cape police commissioner Johan Deyzel is investigating a special police taskforce for fraud, writes Gustav Thiel
The four members of a special investigative team that found evidence of widespread police corruption in the Northern Cape are themselves now under investigation for fraud by the province’s police commissioner, Johan Deyzel.
The members of the task team, which was created in December 1996 by Northern Cape Premier Manne Dipico, say the fraud allegations are false, and that they are part of a campaign by Deyzel to discredit the team and ultimately the team’s findings.
The deputy chair of the task team, South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) national treasurer Ross Henderson, said he had warned when the report was released in September that police in the province were unlikely to follow up the report because of the involvement of Deyzel.
Dipico appointed the task team after detectives in the province expressed concern about the conduct of members of the Kimberley anti-corruption unit and the South African Narcotics and Alcohol Bureau.
The most publicised of the allegations the team investigated were claims that police were using an abandoned Kimberley mine shaft to dispose of bodies of street children and vagrants they had killed. The task team recommended that individual police should be prosecuted for the killings, but no action has been taken. Deyzel says the team had no authority to recommend prosecutions; the team says it was instructed to do so by Dipico himself.
There have been other clashes between members of the task team and the police commissioner, including Deyzel’s insistence that the report should not have been made public – it was released by Dipico – because team members signed a confidentiality clause. Henderson says that is not true.
The three other members of the investigative team now being investigated by the police are its chair, advocate Thebogo Rakgoale, Reverend JR Phenyeke and John Kearns from the Department of Safety and Security. The charges against Rakgoale and Kearns ”suddenly surfaced this week”, says Henderson.
Phenyeke is being investigated by police for his involvement in the purchase of vehicles for Sanco; the civics organisation had experienced serious financial problems last year which led to their repossession.
Phenyeke has maintained there was no fraud on his part, and has said he has evidence of police complicity with Wesbank and other banks involved in the repossession.
Henderson is being investigated for allegedly representing someone in a 1994 alimony case in Kimberley without having the legal qualifications to represent her. The woman in question however, has said in a sworn affidavit, of which the Mail & Guardian has a copy, that Henderson had never, in fact, represented her, and that she had never asked police to pursue a case against him.
Henderson says the police tried to raid his house in December 1996 to search for documents in the task team’s possession, but he turned them away because ”they had a search warrant for Sanco’s offices, but not my house.
”What I found very strange was that the police were accompanied by an official of the attorney general’s office, and to my mind this compromised the integrity of that office. I have received no satisfactory explanation as to why this happened.”
Several witnesses whose testimony was used by the task team in their report are also being charged with criminal activity, which Henderson says is further evidence of police attempts to discredit the report.
The Northern Cape police have other image problems, notably the case of a dismissed officer who says he has been the victim of racism.
Sergeant Abel Loeto insists that his 1989 dismissal for insubordination was the result of ”racist action by white police officers of the old order who could not stand my attitude towards them”.
Loeto has been trying since his dismissal to be reinstated, with the support of a number of people, including the station commissioner of the police in Kimberley. DW Tyuthuza has said he believes Loeto was unfairly dismissed because of his outspoken attitude.
Henderson said, in a sworn affidavit filed in the old Transvaal Supreme Court, that Loeto was ”very strict about assaults on political detainees, cleanliness on prison premises and he refused to let his seniors assault or ill-treat prisoners”. He said charges against Loeto, including rape, possession of dagga and untidiness, were ”unfounded”.
The provincial secretary general in the Northern Cape, William Steenkamp, has written to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki on his behalf.
Henderson says Loeto’s case, and the handling of the task team’s report by Deyzel, prove that ”there are still a lot of people in power who perpetuated dirty tricks under apartheid and they are being allowed to get away with it. Something must be done.”
Deyzel says the task team was officially disbanded by Dipico in September, and that the members are being investigated as individuals.
”It is a mere coincidence that they are all being investigated. Nobody is above the law and must get a decent hiding if they are guilty, even myself.”
In the meantime, the police’s Independent Complaints Directorate is compiling a report about the task team’s findings. This, says Deyzel, will put to rest ”speculation” about police corruption in the Northern Cape.