Zuma’s VIP protector gets top foreign post
Former spook attends envoy training despite matric scandal
DISGRACED former crime intelligence boss major-general Chris Ngcobo — who was caught lying about having a matric certificate — has been rewarded with an ambassador’s post.
Ngcobo has been attending classes at the Department of International Relations’ diplomatic academy in Pretoria since July this year. His likely assignment is Mali.
Ngcobo appears to have a close relationship with President Jacob Zuma. He previously headed the VIP protection service and was responsible for Zuma’s security. He also had a close relationship with Zuma’s bodyguards.
He was part of the group in the VIP service that successfully campaigned against a move to reduce Zuma’s security contingent after he was fired as deputy president in 2005.
The ambassadorship comes after Ngcobo left the South African Police Service amid controversy for saying he had a matric certificate while only holding a Grade 10 qualification.
Ngcobo confirmed this week that he had been training as a diplomat, but could not say where he would be deployed.
“I don’t know what the arrangement is and the processes, but I am just attending [training sessions]. I just hear from people that it is Mali and other places, but I don’t know.
“Look, on that deployment, I don’t have a challenge or a problem with it,” said Ngcobo.
It is believed that his appointment will be announced next year.
Ngcobo resigned from the police in July this year while a disciplinary hearing was under way over his apparent misrepresentation of his qualifications. He had been placed on special leave in October 2013 by national police commissioner Riah Phiyega — herself since suspended — after the State Security Agency discovered discrepancies in his qualifications during a vetting process. He had been crime intelligence boss for a year after his predecessor Richard Mdluli had been suspended in 2012.
He maintains he made a mistake.
“The mistake on my side was to confuse Grade 10 and Standard 10. That is where the problem was . . . I was just asked to produce my certificates and qualifications . . . they said I have written it down so I must go and get the certificate.
“But I said it’s not there and I don’t have it [matric certificate]. So I went to my CV — that’s when I saw what they were referring to. Then I wrote to NatCom [the national commissioner] to say that there was a misunderstanding of Grade 10 and Standard 10. If I had produced any document it would have been something.”
But Phiyega, in an interview with the Sunday Times last week, said Ngcobo only came clean about his qualifications after she had summoned him to her office.
Phiyega said a vetting process by the State Security Agency had found that Ngcobo had lied about his qualifications.
At first he told them that he could not find his certificate, but the Department of Basic Education had no record of it.
Vetting officials visited his school and the surrounding community, none of whom had any knowledge of him completing matric.
“When he told me that he confused Grade 10 with Standard 10, I told him back in his days there were no grades but only standards,” Phiyega said.
Ngcobo, a former Umkhonto weSizwe operative who went into exile in 1984, claimed he was being persecuted by Phiyega because he had been investigating her for defeating the ends of justice after she tipped off Western Cape police commissioner Arno Lamoer that he was being probed by crime intelligence.
The Independent Police Investigative Directorate cleared Phiyega.
Ngcobo said: “When they initiated that disciplinary hearing, it was flawed because the same complainant was the same person that investigated the matter, there was no investigating officer. I didn’t leave out of my own will. General Phiyega didn’t want to see anything else but to see me outside of SAPS.”
During his disciplinary hearing Ngcobo called former police commissioner Bheki Cele as a witness to back up his claim that the police knew that he had no matric.
But yesterday Phiyega hit back at Ngcobo. She said: “He must tell the truth as to how the whole thing about the so-called misunderstanding with Grade 10 and Standard 10 came about. He is the one who was being vetted and told the state that he has a matric certificate. We only acted on information that was given to us after vetting processes. I never targeted him and this Lamoer thing is his own creation with no basis.”
The mistake on my side was to confuse Grade 10 and Standard 10
jikat@sundaytimes.co.za