MPs mull Phiyega’s fate over Marikana

THE future of suspended national police commissioner Riah Phiyega has not been decided yet, but Parliament will be looking into the report that recommended she be fired.

The portfolio committee on police will today discuss the Claassen Report, following the inquiry into Phiyega’s fitness to hold office.

Researchers of Parliament have been asked by the committee to give a briefing on the report, which was made public earlier this year after President Jacob Zuma had sent it to the House.

Phiyega has challenged the findings in court and believes she was innocent of any wrongdoing.

She has said in the past that at the time of the Marikana incident she had been in the job for just four months.

Zuma suspended Phiyega in October, 2015 after he had been given the report.

Last week Police Minister Nathi Nhleko told Parliament that the police had been sued for R1.1 billion by the families of the victims of the Marikana massacre.

Nhleko said agreement had been reached to pay the families.

He did not reveal the proposed settlement with the Marikana victims’ families. Lawyers for both parties were discussing the final figures.

The government tabled an offer on February 22 to the families and most of them had accepted the offer in principle, Nhleko said.

Thirty-four miners were killed in Marikana in August, 2012. But 10 other people, including police officers and security guards were also killed.

MPs last week called for the recognition of the other people who were murdered in Marikana, to bring the total number of victims to 44.

The Claassen Report found that Phiyega was not fit to hold office.

The chairperson of the portfolio committee on police, Francois Beukman, said in January they did not have the power to implement the findings of the report.

That decision lay with Zuma, he said, but the committee wanted to draw lessons from what had happened in Marikana.

The police have had several national commissioners in the past few years.