Bheki Cele justifies armed police in the House using apartheid-era National Key Point Act

“In accordance with the National Key Point Act (1980), any National Key Point should have a protection force. Therefore, the national Parliament of South Africa is protected by the SAPS,” was Police Minister Bheki Cele’s reply in Wednesday’s peace and security cluster Q&A to the EFF’s question about whether he had called in the police during President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (Sona) on 9 February. 

Cele went on to maintain that the police derived their power directly from the Constitution, section 205(3), which in his books meant whatever a court may have ruled could not trump this provision. 

“I don’t think the decisions of the courts are above the Constitution unless they order the change of the Constitution. The standing authority of the SAPS is derived from section 205(3) of the Constitution: ‘The objects of the police service are to prevent, combat and investigate crime, to maintain public order, to protect and secure the inhabitants of the Republic and their property, and to uphold and enforce the law’.” 

And during the follow-up questions, it was back to apartheid references to support the Sona police intervention, this time the killing of apartheid prime minister HF Verwoerd. 

“The Parliament of the Republic of South Africa does have a history of where the prime minister was killed in the House. So... proactive [steps] of the police that happened on the day should be part of the prevention and protection of the inhabitants as this is instructed by the Constitution.” 

Cele’s statements in the House on Wednesday show some nifty shuffles around South Africa’s constitutional democracy. 

And that includes the police’s constitutional responsibility to uphold the law, including the 2004 Powers, Privileges and Immunities of Parliament and Provincial Legislatures Act that gives sole control of everything in the parliamentary precinct to the presiding officers.  

During the Sona, National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, a one-time defence minister, called in the security forces as Clause 4 of that Act permits — only in cases of an imminent threat to life and property. 

MPs will take their arguments to the rules committee on whether a few placard-carrying EFF MPs were an imminent threat to the life of President Cyril Ramaphosa. However, the speed with which what seemed to be presidential counter-assault unit members were in the House, as well as the presence in the corridor of the riot cops, as the Public Order Police are colloquially known, almost smacked of pre-planning.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Armed police in the House set the stage for Ramaphosa declaring a National State of Disaster” 

It’s on public record that the security planning for Sona is headed by the NatJoints, the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure of spooks, soldiers and cops that’s not established in law or regulation and operates without parliamentary or independent oversight.  

NatJoints was also central in the Covid-19 two-year lockdown executive decision-making in the National Coronavirus Command Council, and more recently it’s been active at Eskom, according to Wednesday's live-streamed presidential spokesperson’s briefing. 

NatJoints exists in the current security architecture that aside from the statutory entities like the State Security Agency and the SA Police Service also includes the National Security Council which Ramaphosa reinstituted on 27 February 2020. 

Deepening securitisation of society