Cele said he was able to get around the resentment but understood the anger. He said after he visited Phoenix, he was met with animosity in African townships and was told to “go eat curry”.
He said he visited several places and could testify that the unrest took a decidedly racial turn, with it becoming apparent that being pulled out of your car at a makeshift roadblock depended on whether you were Indian or African. It was clear, he said, that it was not wise to decommission the reinforcements, because the “real typhoon” was on its way.Ĭele then expanded on what he witnessed in the week of deadly unrest that followed.
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But on the way there, it became apparent that more trouble was brewing because trucks were stranded on the road and drivers reported having their keys confiscated. He said Ramaphosa, perhaps ever the consummate negotiator, replied that there was plenty of time yet.Ĭele said after Zuma was delivered to prison, he had been asked to thank police officers seconded to the province on standby at Eshowe the following day for their efforts. “I say to my boss, my hope is diminishing, it looks like we will have to do it the hammer way … At 10, I phoned the commander-in-chief and said, sorry commander-in-chief, we will have to move.” He said he placed a phone call to Ramaphosa at 10pm to caution him that there was no deal yet. Zuma finally agreed, at 11.20pm, to allow himself to be taken to the Estcourt Correctional Centre, Cele said, but for many long hours before that everything seemed to hang in the balance. So the seventh was the D-day,” he said, referring to the deadline the court set for the incarceration of the former president.Ĭele said there was some discussion as to when, exactly, the deadline expired and it turned out to be at midnight on 7 July. “We were clobbered and told, go and do your work. This included sending an extraordinary letter to the office of the chief justice, informing him that they would not act on the court order to arrest Zuma pending the outcome of his bid to rescind his sentence. “So the best thing was to take two steps back on it,” he said. Cele said that because there were women and children in the crowd, he was perturbed by a tip-off that hardcore Zuma loyalists “wanted blood”. The messages came through that blood would be spilled. Shots were fired at Nkandla, confirming the warning that people in the crowd were armed. “Again, I got counselling from the president so say anything that can cause direct conflict, avoid it, without breaking the law.”
In his testimony to the HRC this week, Mkhwanazi said the crowds were plainly breaching Covid-19 regulations but the police decided not to act, unless strictly necessary, so as not to aggravate an already tense situation.Ĭele said Ramaphosa agreed with this approach, because, given the remarks made by Zuma’s supporters, the situation was clearly risky. It allowed him, the minister said, to stay away so as not to inflame tension, while getting regular briefings and relaying information to Ramaphosa. “It was not just a tea visit … it was a visit initiated by myself and those who work with me,” he said, adding that he had hoped to lean on the relationship they formed not only when he served in Zuma’s cabinet, but in exile during the armed struggle against apartheid.Īt this point Kwazulu-Natal provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi went to Nkandla to appraise himself of the situation. Zuma dug in his heels and earned a 15-month sentence for contempt of court. This prompted him to visit Zuma at Nkandla in an attempt to persuade him to cooperate with the Zondo commission of inquiry. “It could not be true that we could not see that the dark clouds were gathering, going forward,” he said at the outset. In a statement to the HRC, Cele said it was not true that the police and the government were unaware that the arrest could trigger violence. Police Minister Bheki Cele told the Human Rights Commission (HRC) on Friday that he had expected trouble over the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma in July, and had spent the night it happened in nail-biting negotiations and constant contact with President Cyril Ramaphosa.