Nhleko will ‘prove’ to Zondo there was ‘clear’ tampering with Ipid rendition reports

Former minister of police Nathi Nhleko on Tuesday told the chairperson of the commission of inquiry into state capture that he will prove that there was “clear” tampering with the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) reports on the illegal rendition of Zimbabweans in 2010.

The Ipid produced two contradictory reports on the alleged abduction and illegal deportation of at least four Zimbabweans, who were handed over to Zimbabwean police by their South African counterparts.

The first report dated 22 January 2014 was signed off by Ipid investigator Innocent Khuba and it found that former Hawks head Anwa Dramat, former Gauteng Hawks head Shadrack Sibiya and Hawks cross-border desk head Leslie “Cowboy” Maluleke had been involved in the renditions and should be criminally charged.

However, after taking up office as the Ipid head, Robert McBride was briefed on the case, he reviewed it and completed a second report which did not make such a recommendation.

McBride told the commission last year that he could not find prima facie evidence that Dramat and Sibiya had committed any crime, hence he recommended that they should not be prosecuted. However, he said he recommended that Maluleke should be held accountable.

Nhleko ultimately suspended McBride on March 25, 2015, accusing the former Ipid head of misleading the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) by allegedly altering the original rendition report implicating Sibiya and Dramat.

On Tuesday morning, Nhleko told Zondo that a question the chair had posed on Monday during his first testimony at the commission made it difficult for him to sleep during the night as he “reflected” on it.

Nhleko said the question Zondo had posed was: “But what’s the problem with the signing of the two reports?”

Nhleko told Zondo that there is no provision in the law that allows for a second report to be produced which would nullify the first which had been signed off and referred to the NPA for it to make a decision on whether a prosecution would be pursued.

The former minister said a closer look at the two reports shows “clearly” that the first report had been tampered with and that the completion of the second was not merely about correcting the “cosmetics and grammar” of the first one.

He said it was evident that material evidence was “plucked out” from the first report when the second one was completed, which he added was “where the fundamental problem” lies.

Nhleko further said that the prosecutors from the NPA who had been assigned to assist the Ipid on investigating the renditions and completing the first report knew nothing about the second report.

“If the second report was valid, they would have been in the know of the production of that report and that’s where the disjuncture in a sense lies in,” said Nhleko.

He reiterated that the second report was not the result of “grammatical changes” being done on the first, “it’s not true”, but there in the body of the first report “you have deletions”, a matter which he said would be proven before the commission.

Ignoring that the one report was tampered with would threaten South Africa’s safety, Nhleko said, because that would mean agents of the state are permitted to “willy nilly” interfere, alter or change reports, which would mean a compromise on “fairness, justice and humanity”.

Nhleko further told Zondo that it must be noted that people died as a result of the renditions and that their deaths were a result of the actions of agents of the state that must uphold the law, adding that a failure to be “alive” to these deaths would mean a loss of “our humanity”.

Zimbabwean security forces reportedly killed Witness Ndeya. Shepherd Tshuma was reportedly tortured and released. Prichard Tshuma is also believed to have been killed. Gordon Dube, who was suspected of involvement in the murder of Bulawayo serious fraud squad head Lawrence Chatikobo, was handed to Zimbabwe’s police.

Nhleko also took issue with the use of the phrase “so-called” when referring to the renditions because these had taken place and people had died, saying a continued use of this phrase could result in the conception of another, that being “so-called deaths”.

ALSO READ: Instead, he suspended former Gauteng Hawks boss Shadrack Sibiya and former Hawks boss Anwa Dramat for their alleged role in the renditions