Bheki Cele is unfit for office and has been so for more than a decade

The intemperate outburst by Minister of Police Bheki Cele at a public meeting in Gugulethu last week deserves censure. The minister is clearly not fit for the high office he occupies and should be relieved of his duties by the President without dither or delay.

The unfitness for office of Cele has a long history. He was the butt of a Sunday Times front-page story more than a decade ago in which the negotiation of leases for police headquarters in Durban and Pretoria at three times the going rental rates came into focus in public for the first time. This coverage elicited complaints to the Office of the Public Protector (OPP) which produced two reports on the newspaper story called “Against the Rules” and “Against the Rules too”.

The Public Protector, then Thuli Madonsela, recommended to the president, then Jacob Zuma, that his national commissioner of police, then Bheki Cele, should face a board of inquiry into his fitness for office arising out of his involvement in the negotiation of the leases in question.

The Moloi Board of Inquiry was duly convened, heard the evidence its narrow mandate allowed it to receive and duly recommended that Cele be dismissed for what it found to be his dishonesty and incompetence. Cele was dismissed by Zuma. He soon resurfaced as a politician and was appointed as a deputy Cabinet minister by the self-same Zuma who had dismissed him as police chief. He occupies the role of minister of police in the Ramaphosa Cabinet of today, having been so appointed at the inception of the Ramaphosa presidency in 2018.

A further recommendation of the Moloi Board of Inquiry, chaired by the late Justice Jake Moloi, has apparently not received the necessary attention. It was recommended that the appropriate authorities investigate the involvement of Cele in corrupt activities. The Moloi board could not do so as it did not have the power to subpoena, among others, Roux Shabangu, the property developer involved in the police headquarters deals at crookedly inflated cost to the taxpayer.

As far as has hitherto been determined, this criminal investigation recommendation by the Moloi board was not acted on at all. Indeed, upon and after her appointment, the current National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP), Shamila Batohi, was not aware of the Moloi recommendation as she had been living and working in The Hague at all relevant prior times.

Batohi, upon first hearing of the matter in 2020, promptly referred the suspicion of corruption to the then head of the National Prosecuting Authority’s Investigating Directorate (ID), Hermione Cronjé, for follow-up investigation. This first step was taken after the Moloi board recommendation was drawn to the NPA’s attention during a public engagement in cyberspace which she very properly arranged with civil society organisations in 2020.

No prosecution against Cele has ensued.

In March 2021 Accountability Now wrote to the NPA requesting a report on progress in this matter and others.

Here is the text of the email dated 16 March 2021:

Greetings,

According to a report in Legalbrief this morning:

Batohi defended the NPA pursuing only the officials, saying their decisions were based on evidence, according to the TimesLIVE report: ‘We do not target individuals but we certainly follow the evidence and that is really important because we are not politicians and are not here to play political games,’ said Batohi. ‘What we are here to do is to ensure that those who have plundered our government resources are held to account no matter which part of the political spectrum they belong to.’

The sentiments so expressed align perfectly with the constitutional obligation of the NPA to act without fear, favour or prejudice.

A year has elapsed since the NDPP asked the ID to look into allegations of corruption against former National Commissioner of Police, now Minister of Police Bheki Cele. During that year we have fed the ID with the Moloi Board of Inquiry report which found Cele to be incompetent and dishonest. We have also referred the ID to the reports of the OPP called “Against the Rules” and “Against the Rules Too” in which the irregularities in the SAPS HQ leases are traversed. We have not been asked for further information. Indeed, we have never had any report on progress from the ID on any matter we have referred to the ID. Only an irritable buck-pass to the SCCU in the Seth Nthai case, which also appears to be becalmed, and complete silence on prosecuting Jacob Zuma for decapitating the NPA by sidelining Mxolisi Nxasana, a complaint that dates back to 2015.

The Justice Portfolio Committee has been asked to look into the long delays, but it has other fish to fry in 2021.

Please be so good as to furnish a report on progress in all three matters alluded to above. It could save the NPA a lot of trouble in the future.

Yours in accountability…

The prosecution of Seth Nthai is, at long last, under way after the Supreme Court of Appeal expressed surprise at the failure of the NPA to prosecute him for soliciting a bribe. In the Nxasana matter, an offer of the services of senior counsel at discounted rates to run the proposed trial against Zuma has been met with stony silence from the NPA.

Read in Daily Maverick: “It’s not ‘now or never’ for the NPA; it’s never ever”

Cele lives a life of impunity. He hankers after his role as chief of police, likes being called general, often wears military-style regalia and ignores the National Development Plan and Marikana Commission recommendations that the police be urgently demilitarised. He does so despite the acceptance by the government of both sets of recommendations. He is notorious for going to war with senior members of police management.

No word on NPA probe