Nathi Nhleko on Zimbabwe Rendition: Waffle, verbiage and still far from the truth

On Wednesday 29 July the former minister of police Nathi Nhleko spent a third, long day at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture answering to allegations that he was a not-insignificant cog in a larger wheel which captured the criminal justice cluster during his term under Jacob Zuma.

Nhleko, who will be remembered for his spectacular defence of Zuma’s “fire pool”, is an expansive and confident waffler. So much so that Zondo, during all three days of Nhleko’s evidence, attempted to shimmy him along to get to the “meat” of questions being asked.

On Wednesday, responding to a query as to why he had suspended IPID executive director Robert McBride, or what it was that McBride had actually “done wrong” with regard to the “Zimbabwe Rendition” matter, Nhleko drew on a version of his old “traffic cop” theory.

The former minister explained to Zondo that McBride’s recommendations in a second IPID report that Hawks head Anwar Dramat and Gauteng Hawks head Shadrack Sibiya be exonerated were merely “an opinion” and not fact.

“Look, if you go out here in Joburg and you cross a red robot and a traffic officer will stop you and tell you this is a violation of crossing a red robot, then that is not a view,” he tried to school Zondo.

The story about being stopped by the traffic cops had been deployed once before by Nhleko, in March 2016. It happened during a heavy-duty press conference at the peak of the hounding of Pravin Gordhan by the Hawks and the unit’s then-boss, Berning Ntlemeza, with regard to the “rogue unit” saga.

Attempting to explain why the timing of the charges against Gordhan was “not political”, Nhleko offered this explanation to a packed media room: 

“Now, when you come from different offices as a journalist, the fact of the matter is that it is possible that, before getting here, you might have crossed a red robot or traffic light. Therefore it would be strange to expect that a traffic cop shouldn’t give you a traffic fine for a traffic violation because you were rushing to this press conference and therefore it is natural for the cop to do that.”

On Wednesday, Zondo, clearly not convinced by Nhleko’s traffic violation theory, responded:

“Well, a police officer who sees what he or she might think is a violation of the law might come to you and say, ‘Why are you doing this?’ And if you maybe give an answer that you have an emergency, that police officer might decide that they understood, and they would not arrest you.”

In other words, a “first” “Zimbabwean Rendition” docket, originated by Crime Intelligence and later handed to IPID investigator Innocent Kuba (guided all along by CI and the National Prosecuting Authority) and which recommended that Dramat and Sibiya be suspended, might have more (or less) to it than met the eye.

At the time Koekie Mbeki had been the acting head of IPID and Dramat and Sibiya were involved in several high-profile investigations involving politically connected individuals including Jacob Zuma and Crime Intelligence head Richard Mdluli.

The meat and potatoes are bound to be served, however, when McBride returns to the commission on an as yet undetermined date to face cross-examination by Nhleko’s legal representative advocate William Mokhari.