Nkosinathi Nhleko maintains his Nkandla report is “correct” as no court had ever interrogated it. Released amid rivulets of sweat and a video to the sounds of O Sole Mio at the end of May 2015, it exonerated President Jacob Zuma from any repayments because the non-security benefits identified over a year earlier by the public protector – the swimming pool, cattle kraal, chicken run, amphitheatre and visitors’ centre – actually are strategic security measures. Last month the Constitutional Court ruled that the public protector’s findings and remedial action are binding, unless taken to court, that the president had failed in his constitutional duties, and set a strict time frame for Zuma to “personally” repay costs of these features as determined by National Treasury, in line with the public protector’s determination.

“The Constitutional Court did not deal with my report, never interrogated it, and there’s no court in the country that attempted to interrogate my report,” Nhleko tells Daily Maverick in an interview at his ministerial offices [on Friday]. “That report was not a subject for consideration by the Constitutional Court. So you can’t then say the Constitutional Court found that report to be whatever, because it couldn’t make that finding. The only finding that it did (make)… was out of the consideration of procedural issues.”

Hang on. Didn’t the Constitutional Court judgment effectively invalidate the police minister’s report by upholding that of the public protector? Nhleko says no. “(My) report is correct. It is precisely so because the issues lie with the approach. The approach was a research approach… Anyone who then would say: ‘Oh ja, but your report is wrong’, I don’t have a problem with that. The only problem I have is that you must then conduct your own research work to disprove this one.”

So to accept the invalidity of his report, the Constitutional Court would have had to expressly say it is invalid? “Yes,” Nhleko says.

That the Constitutional Court did not do. And Nhleko comes out fighting, blaming opposition politicking for obfuscation even during his police budget vote on Thursday. “The unfortunate thing in the context of political parties here, the issues are raised opportunistically to give it a particular spin as if the Constitutional Court was considering that report and dealt and interrogated that report, when it never did.”

Verbal shadow boxing erupts also over the Hawks’ investigation into the SARS unit, when the elite investigators instructed Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan to answer 27 questions days before his 2016 budget presentation in Parliament. SARS commissioner Tom Moyane opened the case early last year at a Pretoria police station, it was recently officially confirmed.

“If a matter has been reported, the police have a duty to investigate this and come to a conclusion,” says Nhleko, rolling with the punches: “A charge arises out of an investigation.”

But it appears he still hasn’t had that chat with his Cabinet colleague for state security, David Mahlobo, as to why Hawks boss Lieutenant-General Mthandazo Ntlemeza wrote an information note on the SARS investigation to state security, when his reporting lines are to the police minister.

Nhleko has stood by Ntlemeza, appointed in September last year despite repeated sharp criticism based on a judgment in one of the plethora of police suspension matters brought to the courts, which found the Hawks boss had been “biased and dishonest”. The minister on at least two public occasions has deftly sidestepped this, saying the judge expressed merely an opinion.

Nhleko clearly is not one to throw in the towel. The KwaZulu-Natal-born former trade unionist turned MP in 1994 – he was ANC Chief Whip between 2002 and 2004 – and went on to serve two years from 2006 as KwaZulu-Natal correctional services commissioner (during his term Zuma’s former financial adviser Schabir Shaik serving a fraud jail term and was released on medical parole) before becoming municipal manager at uMhlathuze council. In 2011 he was appointed labour director-general, but was seconded to public service and administration in 2013 following a reported fallout with the labour minister. After the May 2014 elections, Nhleko was plucked for Cabinet as one of the two permissible ministerial appointments from outside the ranks of MPs. (The other is Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane.)

Standing out from the bog standard government-issue furniture of cream sofas, matching wingback chairs and large dark wood conference table is a big old safe in the corner, a classic from a much earlier decade than the humungous flat screen television next to Nhleko’s desk. There appear to be few, if any, personal effects around the office.

To date he’s had a tough session in a difficult portfolio. Hawks aside, pretty much all the institutions reporting to Nhleko are headed by acting appointments – the SAPS, where acting national commissioner Lieutenant-General Khomotso Phahlane has put his smiling face to the back-to-basics policing logo, the civilian secretariat oversight structure and the Independent Police Investigation Directorate (Ipid).

Is it a concern? “That’s where you are making a mistake. These are institutions. And institutions function regardless,” says Nhleko. “The problem is we are beginning to introduce a personality cult into the work of institutions and we can’t afford to do that in a democratic context.

“It doesn’t mean because you are acting, you have less powers to do what you need to do,” he adds. “Instability correlates with dysfunctionality. You can only have instability precisely because the institution is dysfunctional. But if the institution is functional – and yes, has an acting person at the helm – we then can’t say on the basis that person is on an acting arrangement up there it is unstable. Those two things do not necessarily correlate.”

As the suspended Ipid head Robert McBride’s cases drag through the courts, the board of inquiry against suspended SAPS national commissioner General Riah Phiyega’s fitness to hold office is set to finally get under way. The inquiry stems from the Marikana commission of inquiry findings that she misled the commission. Still pending in Parliament is the police committee’s unprecedented Rule 201 inquiry into SAPS provincial commissioners’ politicking by publicly backing the embattled police boss last year while the president was yet to decide on that board of inquiry. In a pivotal moment the commissioners apologised to MPs for their behaviour. Once the National Assembly adopts the committee report, its hard-hitting recommendations go to Nhleko for action.

Meanwhile, the Ipid 2014/15 annual report shows nationally there were 244 deaths in police custody, up from 234 the previous year, 423 South Africans died as a result of action by police in 396 incidents, up by six the year before, and there were 145 torture complaints, up from 78 and 50 in the previous two years respectively.

Is that a concern? “I’ve not done a comparative analysis… You’ll find as and when you delve into them one case differs from another and it becomes difficult to have a blanket response,” responds Nhleko, asked about the R26.9-billion ring-fenced for civil liabilities and litigation in the SAPS 2014/15 annual report.

“For the foreseeable future the question of civil claims is going to be there. You still have the Marikana families, victims out of that particular incident. It is going to take a bit of time to stabilise and phase out.” But, he adds, the police “are and should be concerned about the question of civil rights” and that’s an area of work to focus on.

It is in talking about the policing and safety and security white papers, definitive new policy directions, the panel of experts and transformation task team, established to implement the Marikana commission of inquiry recommendations, that the police minister relaxes into a comfortable pace.

These processes are expected to ultimately lead to amendments of the 1995 SAPS Act, a key legislative initiative. But first, in his legislative debut, Nhleko later this year will table in Parliament a new bill to replace the apartheid National Key Points Act.

Also part of these mid- to long-term processes of up to three years is the professionalisation and demilitarisation of police. According to Nhleko, it’s more than changing the military ranks: “The fact that the Salvation Army uses military ranks doesn’t make them violent. They still use the same Bible…”

The prize is to change attitudes. “Here you are dealing with the psyche and the method of training, but also equipping a police member to understand: ‘You are a police member, who has to conduct your work in a manner that is in tandem with the constitutional standing of this country and the nature and understanding of the type of society that we are creating.’”

Perhaps it is this that keeps him doing some fancy footwork elsewhere so as not to end up on the ropes. “We are looking forward to this kind of work,” says Nhleko. DM

Photo: Police Minister, Nathi Nhleko updates South Africa on “Rogue Unit” Investigations during a media briefing at Imbizo Media Centre in Cape Town. South Africa. 02/03/2015. (Siyabulela Duda/GCIS)