Silence on Marikana that speaks volumes

SHE stood accused of being unfit for her office — and offered an unbefitting silence in response.

Suspended national commissioner of police Riah Phiyega declined to testify before the Claassen board of inquiry in Centurion this week.

For the most part, even her body language was mute.

But at moments, Phiyega’s stony demeanour gave way to an irate glare — directed at the advocates for those seeking her removal, particularly Dali Mpofu, who was acting for the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union.

Often she scribbled notes while they attacked. And once they were done, a seven-hour torrent of words in her defence was unleashed by her counsel, William Mokhari and Mahlape Sello.

The pair may have saved Phiyega’s job — by shifting the blame for the Marikana massacre, and subsequent dishonesties, to her subordinates.

But her credibility may be harder to salvage. Even if retired judge Neels Claassen cannot find legal grounds to recommend that President Jacob Zuma dismiss her, the burning question of moral accountability remains.

In the outrageous absence of criminal prosecutions, the Marikana massacre demanded some kind of atonement by the state and the police.

Had Phiyega resigned in the aftermath, she need not have admitted personal culpability; she would merely have shouldered accountability.

It would have been an act of courage, hailed for its rarity in a culture of official impunity.

Her political head at the time, Nathi Mthethwa, admitted his political responsibility to the Farlam commission. But he did not resign; he has since been shunted quietly to the arts and culture portfolio.

Phiyega has made herself an antihero, assuming a mantle of phony victimhood that insults the memory of the true victims.

On Friday, it fell to Sello to defend Phiyega’s silence. “She testified for 26 days [at the Farlam hearings], and that evidence is before you,” she told the board. “If further evidence is adduced in support of that inquiry, she has the right to testify before you to deal with that evidence . . . She has no duty to testify, she has the opportunity to testify.”

Earlier, evidence leader Advocate Ismail Jamie had savaged Phiyega’s handling of the massacre — before the event, soon after it, and during her testimony to the Farlam inquiry, which he said was evasive and misleading. In Jamie’s account, she was either grossly negligent before the killings, for not foreseeing the obvious risk of bloodshed in a “tactical phase” — the use of live ammunition to disarm the strikers — or culpable for that bloodshed if she did.

Insensitivity and lies came next; Jamie said Phiyega described the massacre at a police parade three days later as representing the “best of

The Marikana massacre demanded some kind of atonement by the state and the police

possible policing” — and issued a statement that concealed the Scene 2 massacre, in which strikers were killed while fleeing or hiding.

“It was a disaster for which the captain of the ship must take responsibility,” said Jamie.

Mokhari and Sello’s central argument was to insist that North West’s now retired provincial commissioner, Zukiswa Mbombo, made the fateful decision to use live ammunition.

“In the absence of a direction by the president, [Phiyega] would have exceeded her powers if she had taken over,” said Sello.

Mokhari said Phiyega’s remarks at the parade had been described by retired judge Ian Farlam as an “error of judgment”.

“How can that be elevated to misconduct? Judges make errors of judgment, and they are not faced with disciplinary hearings.”

Another error of judgment, three days earlier, left 34 dead bodies in its wake. It can be elevated to misconduct, and far higher.