The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes Parliament’s police portfolio committee’s decision to investigate our proposal to limit the Minister of Police’s powers to appoint the Executive Director of Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID).
In a letter to committee chairperson, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, I argued that IPID’s independence needs to immunised against political interference and that allowing the Minister of Police to nominate the Executive Director of IPID was counterintuitive and against the spirit of the judgment in McBride v Minister of Police and Another [2016]
While the McBride judgment ultimately limited itself to instructing Parliament to amend the IPD Act insofar as the Minister’s powers to remove the Executive Director of IPID, it did make reference to the Minister’s powers to appoint and highlighted the importance of IPID’s independence.
“To my mind, this state of affairs creates room for the Minister to invoke partisan political influence to appoint someone who is likely to pander to his whims or who is sympathetic to the Minister’s political orientation. This might lead to IPID becoming politicised and being manipulated. Is this compatible with IPID’s independence as demanded by the Constitution and the IPID Act? Certainly not.”
In the 5th Parliament, the police portfolio committee had the opportunity to go beyond just the Ministers powers to remove an Executive Director of IPID and also limit the Minister’s powers to nominate an Executive Director. The committee elected to limit itself to the instruction in the McBride judgment.
Parliament approved this IPID Amendment Bill in 2019 and last night the President assented to the bill. While this is a victory in the fight for IPID’s independence, it is just the first step. As long as a Minister can nominate an Executive Director of IPID behind closed doors a dark cloud of suspicion will hang over IPID and it will remain exposed to possible political interference by the Executive.
The DA is of the view that the IPID Act, in its current form, remains inadequate insofar as the protection of IPID’s independence is concerned and is vulnerable to legal challenge.
The portfolio committee on police has taken the right decision to investigate the DA’s proposal as well the procedural and legal questions I set out in my letter to the committee regarding the process which is currently being followed by the Minister.
If we are going to see an end to police abuse we need to create a culture of accountability and consequence in the South African Police Service. The independence of IPID is key to creating this culture and bringing those who commit these abuses to justice.
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