Suspended deputy police commissioner Lt-Gen Shadrack Sibiya says the confiscation of his three cellphones and a laptop by police would disrupt his preparation for his appearance before the ad hoc committee investigating police corruption and the Madlanga commission.
Sibiya is expected to appear before the ad hoc committee in Cape Town on Monday.
Speaking outside his home on Thursday afternoon after police concluded a search and seizure operation, Sibiya confirmed that police took four of his gadgets. “They came to conduct a search and seizure; [they confiscated] a laptop and three cellphones,” he said, adding that the whole exercise was meant to frustrate him.
“All I want to say is, my gadgets have been taken as I prepare to participate [in the ad hoc committee and Madlanga commission] like all others who participated. Now I am under pressure, I am under siege. I’m called a criminal in front of South Africans, I am waiting to have my day at the commission and the ad hoc [committee].”
He said the search and seizure warrant alluded to money laundering and corruption, among other things.
‘Betrayed’ by colleagues
Sibiya said the experience was traumatising for his mother and children as they were put in one room during the operation.
He said he feels betrayed by his colleagues, including police commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola, with whom he had been working “well” over the years.
Both Madlanga commission and the ad hoc committee are probing allegations of criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system following comments made by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi in July that Sibiya and suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu worked with criminals.
Mkhwanazi said Mchunu had at some stage set up a meeting between him and Sibiya so that they could sort out their differences but the meeting didn't materialise because “there can never be peace between me and criminals”.
Meanwhile, Masemola told parliament’s ad hoc committee yesterday that Sibiya and Mchunu’s chief of staff, Cedric Nkabinde, had always been adamant that the political killings task team should be disbanded.
Masemola said during a meeting in Cape Town in March, Sibiya and Mchunu said the 121 dockets from the unit should be returned to the police stations of origin. He said this was even after he suggested that they could be returned to the police stations of origin or provincial offices’ murder and robbery units.
Legality of search operation
He said Sibiya and Nkabinde did not support his suggestion but instead said the instruction was to disband the task team.
“That if we take them to the province, we are in a way carrying on with the PKTT [political killings task team] under the auspices of murder and robbery and they indicated that the instruction was to disband, not to shift.”
He said it was during this meeting that Mchunu said political killings happened before 1994.
Masemola said in another meeting, Mchunu said he would sign off on the disbandment plan, but in a follow-up meeting, the meeting abruptly ended without him signing off on it.
Masemola also told the committee that after Mkhwanazi’s explosive media briefing in July, Sibiya requested funding for officers from Pretoria to be deployed to KwaZulu-Natal to investigate the 121 dockets, but that request was rejected because it was duplicating the work of the PKTT.
Outside Sibiya’s home yesterday, his lawyer Ian Levitt said the legality of the search operation would be determined by a court of law.
According to Levitt, the officers arrived in six cars, armed and wearing balaclavas.
Sowetan
