Set a killer to catch a killer

McBride is no academic slouch. He has a Higher Certificate in Bomb Making from the ANC’s civil terror division.

W hat a fuss about struggle hero Robert McBride being nominated to head the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid). So typical of racist, Eurocentric liberals not to appreciate the unique skills set he brings to the job. Admittedly, McBride lacks the academic credentials of, say, Dr Mark Shaw, reportedly one of the short-listed candidates rejected. Shaw headed the Institute for Security Studies’ crime and police section, advised the Gauteng safety MEC, chaired the Committee of Inquiry on Police Reform and was chief drafter of the 1998 White Paper on Safety and Security.

Shaw then joined the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, where he was chief of the Justice Reform Unit, and worked on the Programme Against Transnational Organised Crime. He did extensive fieldwork on policing in fragile and post-confl ict states before being headhunted by a Hong Kong consultancy.

But hey, McBride is no academic slouch. He has a brace of BAs and a couple of diplomas in diplomacy. He also has a Higher Certificate in Bomb Making from the ANC’s civil terror division – now disbanded – which SA’s national qualifications agency apparently considers to be the equivalent of at least a PhD.

Think also of the hands-on practical experience he will bring. Who better to understand the interplay of scruples and necessity in the around 700 deaths each year of suspects at the hands of the police than McBride, who killed three women and wounded 69 people with a bomb placed in Magoo’s Bar in Durban in 1986? In any case, although politically unreconstructed citizens tweet squeamishly about the Magoo’s escapade as if it demonstrates a fundamental character flaw in McBride, they ignore that the TRC granted him amnesty.

Sometimes you have to get your hands wet, um dirty, I mean. If anything, the Magoo’s bombing demonstrates that here’s a man who knows how to follow orders and understands the chain of command. This will be a talent when dealing with incidents like the Marikana massacre, in deciding exactly where responsibility should be allocated and where deflected.

While the likes of Shaw might know about policing “fragile and post-confl ict” societies, McBride knows about the murky circumstances in which fragility and confl ict are actually created. He was once arrested – charges were later dropped – for arms smuggling in Mozambique.

There were convictions, too, for drunk driving and defeating the ends of justice, resulting in jail sentences overturned on appeal. So McBride understands first-hand that being accused of bad things doesn’t make one a bad person. It’s likely that the interviewing committee – fortuitously consisting mostly of armed struggle comrades – will have taken this into consideration in preferring him to some ingenue who has never even seen the inside of a jail.

During McBride’s trial there were eye-popping accounts of the Ekurhuleni Metro police under his control being a haven of rigged promotions, false statements, the kidnapping of suspects, the assault of witnesses and the covering up of crimes. These were obviously frivolous accusations – why else would Ekurhuleni spend R12 million to defend McBride? – but nevertheless, again all grist to the experience mill. Simply put, McBride’s nomination is in the highest tradition of ANC cadre deployment.