The police are to introduce lifestyle audits on members as part of sweeping reforms that newly appointed national commissioner Khehla Sitole has promised to introduce.
The circumstances around Pat Mokushane’s appointment as acting crime intelligence boss without his having proper clearance were being investigated as part of efforts to beef up the police’s vetting process, which has been mired in controversy.
Former acting national police commissioner Khomotso Phahlane vacated the position under a cloud following allegations of an improper relationship with a service provider.
Sitole also vowed to dust off Operation Fiela, a controversial exercise during which the Department of Home Affairs, the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the military conducted operations in areas predominantly populated by migrants.
Sitole made his debut appearance in Parliament before the standing committee on public accounts, whose MPs instructed the SAPS to cancel its contracts with Forensic Data Analysts and ones with service providers that are suspected to have been awarded irregularly. The contracts run into the billions of rand.
Fiela was panned by migrant and human rights groups as having left foreign nationals vulnerable to wrongful arrest and for having sparked a spate of xenophobic violence in 2015.
Lt-Gen Sitole’s announcement of lifestyle audits came with his concession that the SAPS had failed to suspend or dismiss Brig Leonora Phetle after it had emerged she had authorised unwarranted vetting for officers and received a suspicious payment of R50,000.
Sitole said: "If we don’t have vetting and ... lifestyle audits, [this] ... can actually taint the security clearance process and can potentially allow for corruption to take root.
"The investigation into how Pat Mokushane was cleared are also in the works at SAPS," Sitole told MPs.
On Fiela, the police commissioner said: "I have issued a directive that we ramp up Operation Fiela because if we are going to win the war on violent crime — as well as the war on corruption — we are going to have to fire on all pistons."
Police committee chairman Francois Beukman urged Sitole to ensure that all SAPS officers went through clearance and high-ranking officers underwent lifestyle audits.
ANC MP Leonard Ramatlakane, who serves on the police committee, admonished the SAPS delegation that appeared before MPs, insisting that parliamentarians had been misled about how the police were tackling deficiencies in the vetting process.
DA MP Zakhele Mbhele said: "The reintroduction of Operation Fiela is welcome and necessary, given the organised, violent crime crisis in SA, but it is not sufficient nor is it a substitute for fixing the fundamentals in the [police service]."
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