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CALLS for the suspension of South Africa’s National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega escalated over the weekend following the president’s announcement of an inquiry into her fitness for office.
An inquiry into Ms Phiyega’s role in 2012’s Marikana massacre, where police shot dead 34 miners during a week of lethal clashes, was one of the recommendations in the Farlam report into the atrocity.
President Jacob Zuma has also asked the police chief to submit to him any reasons she should not be suspended pending the outcome of the new inquiry.
His decision has prompted a confrontation between the South African Policing Union, which wants her predecessor Bheki Cele reinstated, and the Cosatu-affiliated Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, whose Richard Mamabolo says there is no reason to suspend her.
Parliament’s portfolio committee on policing has welcomed Mr Zuma’s announcement, as has the right-wing opposition Democratic Alliance’s shadow policing minister Diane Kohler Barnard.
