Critics might say that in exchanging Jackie Selebi for Bheki Cele, the country has gone from a police commissioner who consorts with gangsters to one who dresses like one.
Cele’s penchant for panama hats and pinstriped suits — part cowboy, part wideboy — contributes to an image that is straight out of Mapantsula — complete with a retinue of pretty young women drawn to his roguish charm.
The similarities between Cele and Selebi are deeper, though.
Both are intelligent men whose self-confidence strays into arrogance and who have a tendency to shoot from the hip. Both are deeply enmeshed in the politics of power and both were probably chosen for their political loyalty ahead of other skills and qualities they might bring to the job.
Comments retired Democratic Alliance provincial leader Roger Burrows: ”The appointment is entirely inappropriate. Bheki Cele is an active and interventionist politician appointed to a job that requires independence and a steady hand and cool head. I can’t see him stopping his political interventionism and that’s the problem.”
Certainly, Cele’s history and record show him as an activist, a political hard-man not afraid to get his hands dirty and not a man unduly concerned with rules and regulations. In the early 1990s he was at the frontline of the conflict with Inkatha in KwaZulu-Natal, popping up in hot spots to rally the troops and regarded by the IFP as one of the ANC’s own ”warlords”.
Cele’s initial mandate after 1994 — first as chairperson of the provincial safety and security committee and later as provincial minister for community safety — seems to have been to counter the political influence exercised by the IFP over what had been a highly politicised provincial and homeland police force in the province.
He seems to have succeeded: by several accounts Cele now has a good relationship with the provincial commissioner, Hamilton Ngidi, a former spokesperson for the once-hated homeland KwaZulu police. But whether taming the police politically has extended to promoting better policing is another matter.
Mary de Haas, who, as an activist and violence monitor has kept a close eye on policing in the province for two decades, is not particularly impressed with Cele.
”Policing has gone from bad to worse in the province since he has been MEC — although the excuse is always that an MEC has relatively little influence over the police —
”He spends a lot of time with the police, though — he’s often out with the boys giving instructions — which is not his job. He should be holding them to account. I deal with the police day in and day out and it’s much worse than in the 1990s when it comes to basic policing and accountability. Now they just refuse to answer questions about incidents and statistics.
”He’ll talk the talk — he’s a typical politician — but my experience is he’s not someone who can take a ball and run with it and see things through.”
De Haas expressed concern about Cele’s human rights profile, noting his defence of so-called ”blue-light bullies” — police VIP guards who speed and drive aggressively when transporting politicians. Cele argued that a politician being late for a meeting constituted an emergency that justified the use of blue lights to get through traffic.
She also raised concerns about Cele’s endorsement of a ”shoot-to-kill” approach by police if they are attacked.
But Cele’s tough talk and street credibility have given him the capacity to throw his weight around where necessary — in a number of cases he has been able to bully back at the bully boys of the taxi industry and he has taken a tough line on certain operators in the bus transport industry.
But perhaps that’s because his targets have not been politically well connected. Another bus company — the failed Durban transport operator Remant Alton — arguably survived as long as it did because of its connections with the powerful eThekwini region of the ANC, which long served as Cele’s power base.
One source told the Mail & Guardian that senior officials in Cele’s office had been inundated with demands to throw out summonses for traffic offences racked up by ANC officials in the hectic run-up to this year’s elections — and that Cele himself had been wary of tough action when it might alienate political allies such as Popcru, the police and prisons union.
Cele’s appointment certainly seems aimed at tilting the political balance at the command level of the police service, where acting national commissioner Tim Williams and his team were perceived as Thabo Mbeki men — or at least not particularly sympathetic to their new political boss in the shape of the relatively inexperienced Nathi Mthethwa.
A source close to the investigation of Selebi, Cele’s corruption-tainted predecessor, told the M&G that former Scorpions investigators working on the case expected the uncooperative attitude of the police to change following the appointment of Cele. Up to now they have struggled to obtain crucial documents which are still in the hands of police crime intelligence.
So Cele’s appointment will not end the politicisation of the criminal-justice system. But indications are that Zuma’s security advisers are genuinely concerned about the extent of the country’s lawlessness and Cele has been appointed not only for his loyalty but because he can kick butt.
Whether he will have the stamina and discipline to make a real impression on the SAPS behemoth remains to be seen.