SAPS IN CRISIS
Police commissioner Khehla Sitole gunning for top cop Jeremy Vearey over Facebook post
Vearey was ordered to make written representations regarding his ‘possible’ suspension ‘within 48 hours’.
Outspoken Western Cape Deputy Police Commissioner Major-General Jeremy Vearey has been informed by National Commissioner Khehla Sitole that he will possibly face a disciplinary hearing as a result of a Facebook post which Sitole has deemed “insulting” to the SA Police Service (SAPS).
The notice of an intended suspension was served on Vearey on 16 March.
Vearey is accused of committing “serious misconduct” in that “on or about 16 Feb 2021 at a location unknown to the South African Police Service, as employer, you have allegedly brought the name of the employer into disrepute”.
Vearey is also accused of intending to “degrade” the SAPS leadership and/or disrespect the authority of the national commissioner of the South African Police Service and was ordered to make written representations regarding his “possible” suspension “within 48 hours”.
The deputy provincial commissioner is a rara avis in the SAPS.
Not only is he an accomplished author who won the coveted kykNET-Rapport Book Prize for his Afrikaans-language biography, Jeremy vannie Elsies, but he is also a poet, historian and a teller of enthralling tales of baboons or the “ghoes with the golden hair device” also known as the “Meita Hare of the BoKaap”. These he posts regularly to his Facebook page.
In February it appears Vearey used the phrase “Time Longer Than Rope”, referring perhaps to the title of a seminal 1967 work of history by Edward Roux and regarded as one of the best accounts of the colonial genesis of apartheid and how the English created the institutions and bureaucracy that enabled the later imposition of the ideology.
Vearey has often attached the phrase to his posts of various media articles relating to the ongoing face-off between Vearey’s close comrade Lieutenant-General Peter Jacobs and Sitole.
The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union will be making representations on Vearey’s behalf. DM
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What a joke Sitole is obviously getting desperate.
The benefits and latitudes granted to the upper echelons of the police service are generous. Virtually unlimited access to slush funds, no checks and balances and hey, we’re the police. But whatever you do, don’t besmirch the fine reputation of the SAP on Facebook!
Just more proof that Sitole is ignorant and (rightly and deservedly) feels threatened by the likes of the honest and upstanding Vearey and others who are investigating misdeeds in the SAPS at their peril.