“THESE men are palookas, not policemen; they are cadres, not cops.”
With these words the DA leader in Ekurhuleni, Clr Ghaleb Cachalia, described the city’s past three police chiefs – at the monthly meeting of the council in Germiston on Thursday.
Referring to the resignation of the most recent chief, Bafana Mahlabe, the day before, he said: “For a considerable period of time the DA in council and in the provincial legislature, has questioned his appointment and fitness for office. Mahlabe, prior to his deployment, was never a member of the metro police and his appointment was flawed.
“He subsequently registered as a student, to avail himself of the most basic of police qualifications; a clear attempt to retrofit and redress the remiss in his appointment,” Cachalia said.
He accused Mahlabe of having had nine officials guard his home – and tasking EMPD security officers to take his wife to the doctor; and to run his children to school on a regular basis.
“This is the man who in recent months, doubled the EMPD spend on overtime from the budgeted R12m to R24m. Our mayor accepted his resignation and wished him well in his endeavour to pursue private business interests. One can only hope he is more qualified for business, than he was as a chief of police.
“One would have expected the mayor to use the occasion of his resignation, to highlight the mismanagement and irregularities. But no, the silence on this is deafening,” Cachalia added.
“This is not an isolated instance in the history of ANC appointments. First there was [Robert] McBride; a deployee who was arraigned for drunken driving. Then there was chief Hlula Msimang’s murder case and his subsequent resignation. The case against him hasn’t yet been resolved, four years later.”
Cachalia also wanted to know what Isak Berg, the mayor’s chairperson for community safety, had to say about this? Was he aware of these matters? Why is he silent on the matter? Is it incompetence, or compliance with his masters’ wishes?
“The people of Ekurhuleni and in Mr Berg’s case, Alberton, deserve to know.”
