Comical cops pass the buck

THE testimonies of SAPS chief operations officer Lieutenant-General Bonang Mgwenya and KwaZulu-Natal provincial commissioner Lieutenant-General Mmamonnye Ngobeni were always going to be crucial.

Both women hold powerful positions, having been hand-picked by General Bheki Cele himself after he took office in 2009.

But their testimonies and performances under oath belied their exalted positions and might just have sealed his fate.

This week, they fell over themselves trying to explain their way out of the controversial R1.7-billion lease deals, without much success.

Ngobeni and Mgwenya tried to shift the blame onto the now retired head of supply-chain management, General Hamilton Hlela.

The board of inquiry was set up by President Jacob Zuma to probe Cele's fitness for office after the public protector found that the procurement of the two building leases was unlawful.

The police had initially struck the deal with business tycoon Roux Shabangu.

On Thursday, Mgwenya said she went with Hlela and Cele's legal adviser, General Julius Molefe, on the first site visit to the Middestad building in Pretoria in March 2010.

She said she was ''invited" to view the building at Hlela's request, even though property procurement was not part of her job.

Embarrassingly, she first claimed she had never been to the building before and did not know where it was.

But when told by the inquiry chairman, Judge Jake Moloi, that the building was a ''stone's throw away" from the police's current head office, she admitted: ''It's across the road."

She then told the inquiry that although she had worked across the road from Middestad for 16 years, she had never noticed the building, because she worked "mostly at nights" and was never ''idle".

Molefe, however, appeared to be more alert to his surroundings.

When asked about the building, he gestured wildly with his hands and said: " It says 'Sanlam' in big, bold writing ... everyone knows that building.''

He said he could not remember if Shabangu was at the meeting, while Mgwenya, in response to the same questions, said: ''There were a number of men."

It took several questions to jog her memory, and she finally confirmed that the businessman was, indeed, in attendance.

After Mgwenya's amnesia-struck performance, it was the turn of Ngobeni. KwaZulu-Natal's top cop tried hard to explain why she could not be reached by the board earlier in the week, saying she had not been ''emotionally or psychologically" prepared.

She was named by a senior public works official as having identified the Transnet building in Durban as the base for the SAPS provincial headquarters.

She initially dodged direct questions and responded with sometimes incoherent and lengthy explanations.

This eventually led to an inquiry member, Advocate Terry Motau, reprimanding her: "If you can't recall, then answer that you can't recall."

She brought some light relief and drew chuckles from the gallery when, quizzed about a site meeting at the building, she asked the inquiry panel to explain its definition of a meeting.

She said: ''I'm trying to understand the meaning of a meeting ... is it people sitting around a table or something else?"

Ngobeni was implicated last week as a central figure in the decision to lease the Transnet building during testimony by the KwaZulu-Natal head of procurement, Brigadier Alph-eus Ngema.

He said that, on a site visit, he had raised concerns about the absence of a public works official.

But Ngobeni's "instructions to me were to obtain the information regarding the occupation of the current building, because she had a meeting that afternoon at the airport with ... Cele regarding the same issue".

But Ngobeni this week disputed that, saying: "I find it strange that I would collect info and give it to somebody at the airport. That's not how we work in the SAPS."

On Friday, the inquiry was forced to postpone proceedings when the final witness it called pleaded ill-health.

Mokgaetji Tlolane, an official of the Department of Public Works, first delayed proceedings on Tuesday by refusing to testify unless she was given immunity from prosecution .

When she eventually took the stand on Friday, Tlolane on three occasions said she did not understand how to take the prescribed oath.

This forced the judge to intervene. He told her to say: "So help me, God." But immediately after taking the oath, Tlolane told the board: ''I won't be able to testify. I am not feeling well. I'll testify when the doctor confirms I'm in a condition to do so."

This left the board with no choice but to postpone the inquiry until the end of March.

Tlolane was identified by Shabangu, according to papers filed by him in a court case, as the official who told him that the police wanted to lease the Middestad building and that a negotiated process would follow, instead of it going out to tender.

Shabangu and the Department of Public Works are currently embroiled in a court action to decide on the validity of the Middestad lease.