Cele must motivate to police committee about McBride’s job
POLICE Minister Bheki Cele has been given until Monday to motivate why the employment contract of Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) head Robert McBride should be terminated.
This emerged when the police portfolio committee met yesterday to discuss a process to be followed in handling the renewal or termination of McBride’s employment contract, which ends on February 28.
McBride launched an urgent court application in the High Court in Pretoria to have Cele’s decision not to renew his employment declared unconstitutional, invalid.
This was after Cele notified the Ipid head last month he has decided not to renew his contract, but McBride felt that Cele had overstepped his mark and encroached on the domain of the portfolio committee.
Civil society organisations Corruption Watch and the Helen Suzman Foundation have applied to be friends of the court in the matter.
On Tuesday, the pair reached an agreement that the portfolio committee would decide before the end of this month on whether or not to renew McBride’s contract.
They agreed that the matter would again be enrolled on the urgent roll on unlawful and February 26.
The portfolio committee has until February 22 to submit an affidavit on progress it is making regarding the renewal of McBride’s contract.
Briefing the committee yesterday, chairperson Francois Beukman said Cele should submit his reasons on Monday on why he did not want McBride’s contract extended.
Beukman added that McBride would be given until Wednesday to respond to Cele’s reasons.
Cele did not provide any reasons in his correspondence to the committee on his decision.
“I request that my recommendation not to renew the contract of employment of Mr McBride be considered by the National Assembly,” he wrote in a letter to Speaker Baleka Mbete.
Beukman said the committee planned to sit on February 22 for deliberations and discussion.
“What we will submit on Friday morning to court is everything that we did from today until next Friday,’’ Beukman said.
The DA’s Dianne Kohler Barnard said Cele had no right to make a decision on the employment contract of the Ipid boss.
“I have not seen something that arrogant in quite some time,” Kohler Barnard said.
In an interview, the NFP’s Munzoor Shaik-Emam said the committee should look at the matter based on its merit and also take into account McBride’s and Ipid’s performance and the interests of fighting crime.