Pikoli loves job in DA territory

AFTER years of frustration at the hands of “the liberation movement”, former prosecutions boss Vusi Pikoli has found love from the DA.

Pikoli, former head of the National Prosecuting Authority, now heads the Western Cape Police Ombudsman’s office and is loving it.

He was raised in the ANC, having gone into exile and received military training. He later became an adviser, director-general and boss of the NPA.

Now he is serving the DA government in the Western Cape as South Africa’s first police ombudsman. But, he doesn’t see it that way.

“It’s a legitimate government, isn’t it? It was voted in by the people,” he said.

“I am here to serve the people. I am not here to serve the DA or the ANC . . . I am here to do a job.”

And to those who say he has turned his back on the liberation movement?

“If anybody interprets that [his new job] as turning my back on the ANC, that’s plain stupid.”

At his job as NPA head, Pikoli got caught between warring factions in the ANC. In the lead-up to the party’s Polokwane conference Pikoli criminally charged then deputy ANC president Jacob Zuma and former police commissioner Jackie Selebi, who died early this year.

He was sacked by stand-in president Kgalema Motlanthe.

“I don’t play politics here . . . Issues of crime are issues of crime. They affect everybody, irrespective of party politics. When you come to my office, there is only one political party here. It’s the party of the ombudsman.”

The office was set up following the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry into police inefficiencies.