Former IPID head Beukman to Chair Police Committee

Today in Parliament, Committees continued to elect their chairpersons. During the Portfolio Committee on Police’s meeting, the ANC’s Francois Beukman was elected unopposed as Chairperson. Beukman was the executive director of the police watchdog the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) between 2009 and 2012. Before defecting to the ANC in 2005, he was a National Party politician who chaired the legislature's public accounts committee.

After the brief Committee meeting, DA Shadow Minister for Police, Dianne Kohler Barnard, told journalists, “we only have two experienced Members on the Committee, however the newly elected Chairperson Francois Beukman is someone I voted for, much to the ANC’s surprise, to be appointed head of the then ICD [Independent Complaints Directorate], now IPID. On the day of the Marikana massacre he resigned.... I have huge confidence in his abilities and his integrity and I believe he’ll be a great chairperson."

Asked what the Committees priorities were, Beukman said: “The first important thing is that we must deal with the new budget next week, we must look at the estimates of revenue, what they want to spend, what are their plans. From our side we need police conduct that it is line with the Constitution.”

When asked by People’s Assembly about his predecessor’s proposal that SAPS appear before the Committee to account for allegations of a heavy handed response to protests, Beukman replied, “We will have to finalise our programme in July for the rest of the year but public poling is one of the items in the budget so we will interrogate that matter as well next week.”

The Committee has up until 11 July to complete its work on the budgets for SAPS, IPID and the Civilian Secretariat, which will involve presentations from all three institutions. But what else is on the cards for the Committee?

Kohler Barnard said, “Once we shoot through the budget hearings, a priority would be touring [police] stations around the country. As a Committee we have been doing that for years, we pick a province per term and try and get to them because the proof of what you see is quite different from to what the management tells you when they come here. They will say everyone has a bulletproof vest, everybody has toilets and you go there and there is no water, no toilets, no electricity and it is appalling.”

“We as a Committee are known as the ones who go out there and we can spend upward of six or seven hours drilling into what is really going on at a station, and we find out that fifteen people are packed in one cell and the other five cells are used as furniture storage,” she added.

Asked whether she will push for the Committee to consider the report from the O’Regan-Pikoli Commission of Inquiry into Khayelitsha Police, which is due to be finished next month and sent to Premier Zille, Kohler Barnard replied, “Certainly. Reports like that must come here. We need to examine them, we need to find out what the fault lines were, we need to make sure that the matters are dealt with.”

Kohler Barnard added that her biggest concern now was getting feedback on the investigation into the National Commissioner by the IPID. Police Commissioner General Riah Phiyega is being accused of tipping off the Western Cape Police Commissioner Lieutenant-General Arno Lamoer that he was under investigation.

“The word on the street is that case was wrapped up before the elections but of course Robert McBride is there so I don’t know if we will ever see or hear of it, but I’ll make that my number one priority... I want to know what the outcome of that investigation is. They may not hide it from us,” Kohler Barnard said.