While the SAPS has declined to comment on the ruling by advocate Sumayya Tilly, who chaired Malebe-Thema’s disciplinary hearing, finalised in December 2018, the decision should end the former head of SAPS Basic Police Development’s charmed and lucrative career in the service.

Malebe-Thema has had a chequered career in the SAPS. She resigned in 2013 allegedly to avoid facing charges of misconduct. However, her LinkedIn profile (which has since been disabled) stated that she “retired at Brigadier level to establish a centre for victim empowerment”.

Malebe-Thema was re-employed with the rank of major-general in March 2016 after acting commissioner Khomotso Phahlane had been appointed to his position in 2015. Daily Maverick has reliably learned that Phahlane is closely linked to Malebe-Thema.

The victim empowerment concern Malebe-Thema established was the Re-Bafenyi Victim Empowerment Centre, which received a reported R270,000 for about 100 patients transferred there after the Gauteng Department of Health terminated an outsourced contract to Life Esidimeni. (See earlier report in Daily Maverick here.)

Patients were then transferred to hopelessly inadequate NGOs which resulted in one of the most shameful scandals in modern South African history as 144 patients died, some having starved to death.

Malebe-Thema, in her own LinkedIn profile, boasted several business interests including mining, catering, and “events and logistical” supplies.

A complaint about Malebe-Thema’s conduct in Oudtshoorn was lodged with the Human Rights Commission by trade union Solidarity after the major-general said there were too many white people in training positions at the academy. Malebe-Thema’s remarks were deemed “discriminatory, derogatory, improper, unacceptable and inappropriate” and she had been “disparaging, insulting, humiliating and divisive” with regard to remarks she made about the weight of staff at the academy.

Solidarity also turned to the Labour Court in May 2017, forcing SAPS to launch the internal investigation against Malebe-Thema.

Anton van der Bijl, head of legal services at Solidarity, said the hearing had found that Malebe-Thema had not displayed “any remorse for her behaviour and that she kept arguing that she didn’t do anything wrong throughout the investigation”.

“Furthermore, it was found that the general’s selective remarks caused emotional harm to the staff members involved, which had a negative impact on their work and personal lives. In view of this, it was found that Major-General Malebe-Thema should be dismissed with immediate effect.”

Van der Bijl said “this matter is one of the rare occasions where justice triumphed in a situation where a black person was blatantly racist towards white people” and that the union was “delighted” by the outcome.

The SAPS has declined to comment on the disciplinary hearing ruling.

Malebe-Thema’s website for the Re-Bafenyi Victim Empowerment Centre (which has subsequently closed) listed its “key partnerships” as “main government departments” which include “the departments of Police (SAPS), Social Development, Local Government, Health, Justice, Ministry for Women Children and People with Disabilities in the Office of the President and Correctional Services, as well as the Atteridgville (sic) Police Station”.

According to Democratic Party Gauteng health spokesperson Jack Bloom — one of the key figures who exposed the transfer of psychiatric patients from Life Esidimeni health centres to unregistered NGOs — Malebe-Thema’s Re-Bafenyi, based in Atteridgeville in Tshwane, had received 100 patients, some of whom were later transferred to another Re-Bafenyi centre in Hennops River and yet another in Phelindaba.

For this Malebe-Theme’s centre reportedly earned R270,000. One of these patients, the 56-year-old Christopher Mogwarane, died while at the Re-Bafenyi Hennops River facility.

The former major-general also laid claim, in her LinkedIn profile, to supplying “commodities amongst others, fuel the whole country for SANDF, Eskom both inland and coastal”.

Malebe-Thema and her husband Shadrack Thema are listed as directors of various companies listed on the government’s Central Supplier Database and which do business with the state.

In 2014 Parliament passed the Public Administration Management Act which prohibits government officials from being directors of companies that do business with the state. DM