Police came under heavy fire from MPs yesterday for their management of xenophobic attacks after police commissioner Riah Phiyega and the head of crime intelligence appeared to give conflicting information about their actions in KwaZulu-Natal.
Acting head of crime intelligence Bongiwe Zulu told parliament: “Immediately after we heard ... from the media, from everywhere about what the King had said, as intelligence we asked all provinces to monitor the situation.”
Zulu said the provinces were submitting information, but when “major, major events” such as looting of shops occurred, they found “there would be a deployment but there would not be enough people.”
ANC MP Maapi Molebatsi said: “Did I hear correctly? Is the first time this was anticipated only after the king spoke?”
Freedom Front Plus MP Pieter Groenewald said Zulu’s statement appeared to indicate the attacks were as a direct result of what the king said.
But Phiyega refused to comment on a direct link between the attacks and the statements of the king despite several attempts from Groenewald.
She said the king had since clarified his statements. “We are not the judges,” she said.
She pointed to “socio-economic” causes such as competition for business space in townships.
More specifically, a foreigner shooting a local and reports a local business had fired South Africans to hire foreigners were some of the sparks in KZN.
Phiyega said crime intelligence “didn’t just wake up and collide with this” but had been monitoring illegal migration and “anti-foreigner sentiments” over a long period as major threats to South African security.
“It was in the scope of all agencies in South Africa,” she said.
She said her duty as police commissioner had been to deploy people to ensure sufficient deployment of resources, and she had done this. “That is why KZN is stable,” she said.
DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard questioned this, saying it contradicted Zulu’s earlier statement that there had not been enough people on the ground.
“One says there were insufficient police but the national police commissioner says they did a great job. Which is it?”