Soon after her appointment in 2012 when her predecessor, General Bheki Cele, had been declared “unfit for the position” because of his involvement in police property lease agreements, Riah Phiyega used a rather idiosyncratic anecdote to describe herself.

“I am reminded, at this juncture, of what Eleanor Roosevelt said, to say a woman is like a tea bag and when you hold a tea bag, you can’t actually talk about the strength of the tea bag, until, you put that tea bag in boiling water, then you can see the strength of a tea bag… what the world is giving us today is actually providing us with hot water and indeed we would like to jump in, as tea bags, to just show how strong we are.”

After the release of findings of the Farlam Commission of Inquiry into the Marikana Massacre last week and specific recommendations that Phiyega’s fitness to hold office be investigated, she now finds herself in that very proverbial boiling water. And it appears from reports in the weekend press that the beleaguered Commissioner is bracing herself to show just how “strong” she might be by refusing to “go down without a fight”.

As per the Marikana Report recommendations, President Zuma has written to Phiyega requesting her to explain why she might think she is fit to hold office. It is a grand irony, of course, that the man who plucked her from relative corporate obscurity and appointed her to this powerful and key position now expects her to tell him why he did so.

Judge Farlam’s report on Phiyega and the police is damning, and there is no doubt that she will be one high profile player to take the fall along with North West police chief Zukiswa Mbombo. The report found that “political considerations” guided their decisions, including the concern that EFF CIC, Julius Malema, might make political hay in “defusing” the situation.

It was Mbombo, the Marikana Report found, who had absolutely no experience in public order policing, who had rushed the disastrous “tactical operation” that triggered the massacre.

But it is not, tragically, as if the turn of events were unexpected. Experts roundly criticised Jacob Zuma’s surprise appointment of Phiyega at the time. While she might have proved herself a capable and talented group executive in the private and public sector, law enforcement is an entirely different and dirty beast. Both her predecessors, Jackie Selebi and Bheki Cele, were disastrous political appointments.

So much so that the drafters of the National Development Plan (NDP), in its chapter on policing safety and security, proposed that these appointments in future be made on a competitive basis, recommending that a selection panel interview candidates and choose these based on objective criteria. After that, a recommendation would then be made to the president for appointment thus mediating the temptation to place a compliant or inexperienced individual in the position.

However, government’s attitude to the NDP proposals is highlighted in the lack of reference to this specific recommendation in the 2015 White Paper on Policing published in March this year. The paper makes no reference to this important aspect of professionalising South Africa’s police service which has suffered from a series of “crises of top management” according to the NDP.

In the Institute for Security Studies submission on the White Paper Gareth Newham, Head of Governance, Crime and Justice Division and Johan Burger Senior Researcher, Governance, Crime and Justice Division write “The White Paper therefore needs to provide clear and concrete direction on how to ensure that only appropriately skilled, experienced and honest people are appointed to positions of police leadership. Moreover, it needs to provide guidance as to how police integrity is to be maintained when serious allegations against senior police officials emerge. The White Paper in its current form does not do this.”

If Phiyega’s mind turned to political concerns in the midst of the Lonmin crisis, should we be surprised? An unskilled political appointee with little experience (and in this instance the in highly sophisticated matter of policing in a constitutional democracy) and in such a powerful position will by nature attempt to “read” the mind or serve the needs of their political principle – in this case President Jacob Zuma.

Double-guessing what might be “required” of you in limiting political collateral damage rather than dealing with a serious crisis has to taint your ability to act within your mandate. There is, of course, in the end, no written documentation of what the President or the political principle’s “thoughts” might actually have been. There never is. There will be a hands-off distance between the man you thought you were serving and how the law will ultimately dispense or deal with you.

One individual appointment that President Zuma has made, and who has shown her independence of mind is that of Thuli Madonsela as the Public Protector. Her attempts at simply doing her job has – particularly in relation to investigating taxpayer’s expenditure on Nkandla – set her firmly in the cross hairs of some in the ruling party. Madonsela has been publicly vilified and insulted – labelled a DA lackey and a CIA spy – by those incensed that she is doing her job according to its constitutional mandate and not on some vague understanding of what the president might want or require.

Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng has also proved to be an appointment that many at first, unfairly perhaps, viewed as “pro Zuma” but he too has been quick to assert his independence.

So it can be done.

There are many – including disastrous Cabinet appointments – who have been touched by the Presidential Seal in one form or another. These also include former SABC chairperson Ellen Tshabalala, SAA’s Dudu Myeni, Eskom’s Ben Ngubane (who was a supporter of the SABC’s Hlaudi Motsoeneng – another Zuma acolyte).

Some do manage to get away. Bruce Koloane, former Chief of State Protocol, who was outed as Zuma’s point-man at Waterkloof airbase when the president’s close friends and associates, the Gupta family, illegally flew in relatives and friends to attend a wedding in South Africa in 2013, was appointed Ambassador to the Netherlands afterwards. Prosecutions against two Air Force minions, Lieutenant Colonel Stephan van Zyl and Lieutenant Colonel Christine Anderson, who were about to be scapegoated for Guptagate were later withdrawn. Anderson had testified that No 1 had been personally aware of the landing.

While Phiyega did not impress while giving testimony at the Farlam Commission and one of the recommendations is that she be investigated for “misconduct in attempting to mislead the Commission”, the disaster was not all of her own doing. As we all know, she inherited a police force newly militarised by the blustering Bheki Cele, who inherited it from the corrupt Jackie Selebi.

As someone from outside police ranks, she could not have dreamed of the viper’s nest it is in certain inner circles. It is ridden with subterfuge, corruption and skulduggery, which plays out in national headlines on a weekly basis. Sections of crime intelligence as well have been harnessed for political purposes undermining the ability to fight crime and protect the country’s citizens.

But heading the police force is about so much more than fighting crime and criminals. It is about maintaining the rule of law. The true test of a democracy, wrote political philosopher Karl Popper, is whether a ruling party is willing to surrender power without violence after losing an election. This is why the country’s police and defence forces should be staffed by professional and seasoned women and men who serve the constitutional democracy and the country’s citizens and not its politicians.

Writing in 2011 on Bheki Cele’s formation in 2009 of the new Tactical Response Team, author Jonny Steinberg warned that the “shoot to kill” imperative that the General had introduced to the police force might come to haunt us in future.

He quoted philosopher Max Weber, who argued that “institutions are best defined by their means”.

Steinberg wrote: “Institutions of gunmen kill. That is what they do. Whom they kill and to what purpose is really a situational question. At some point in South Africa’s future, political power is going to change hands. It happens everywhere, and we are surely no exception. One of the great questions we face is whether this process will be smooth and orderly. The sort of institution Cele is creating is going to make it that much harder. Strange things happen when a country is unsettled. Once power is up for grabs, an institution schooled in extra-legal killing becomes a valuable asset. All sorts of people offer to buy its services in exchange for all sorts of promises.”

The Marikana massacre has highlighted several critical fault-lines in South Africa, from the relationship between capital and labour, the interference of political elites, the appointment of inappropriately skilled acolytes to positions of power and influence, the state’s response to legal protest, filtering right down to the men and women who carried guns on behalf of the state that day and who shot dead fellow citizens.

Riya Phiyega’s tragic downfall, while not unexpected, and while it has been greeted with “we told you so”, serves hopefully as a warning to those who would do the bidding of political masters rather than the citizens of the country. For in the long run, when you join the dots, the line will lead inexorably to No 1, who, you can rest assured, will escape this sad episode in South Africa’s history unscathed, but not untainted. The party he leads, as many insiders understand, will also be eternally marred by what happened on that koppie in Marikana in August 2012. DM

Photo: National police commissioner Riah Phiyega briefs reporters on their security plan for the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations at a news conference in Centurion on Thursday, 17 January 2013. Picture: GCIS/SAPA