Former chief of South African police jailed and freed again

The former head of South Africa’s police was jailed for 15 years today for corruption, but immediately given bail to appeal.

Jackie Selebi, 60, was convicted last month after evidence which included him going on designer shopping sprees with a drug smuggler.

The case against Selebi, a former president of Interpol, has been the centrepiece of a national debate over whether corruption and political meddling is undermining the fight against crime.

Sentencing him today Judge Meyer Joffe called him “an embarrassment to all right-thinking citizens in this country.”

The judge cited a past speech by Selebi on law enforcement in which he said that police would stop corruption “so we can fight crime with clean hands.”

“It is inconceivable that in a court the chief of police would be found to be an unreliable witness,” Judge Joffe said, adding that Selebi was “a stranger to the truth.”

During sentencing broadcast live on nationwide television, Selebi showed no emotion. The court freed him on bail to lodge an appeal.

Selebi, once an important official in the governing African National Congress party, had pleaded not guilty. He claimed evidence was fabricated for the charge he accepted money and gifts in exchange for meeting a drug smuggler’s business associates and tipping him off to investigations.

Selebi argued he was targeted by enemies who wanted to punish him for his criticism of an elite crime-fighting unit. The unit was disbanded in 2008 after it tried to prosecute Jacob Zuma on corruption charges before he went on to become South Africa’s president.

The judge, in delivering the verdict last month, said Selebi’s conspiracy theory had no basis.

The main opposition Democratic Alliance party described Selebi’s trial as one of the most controversial in South African history, and said “obstacles” were set to block investigations and protect him.

“We as a country are almost completely unfamiliar with the idea of a corrupt official, connected to the ANC, actually going to prison,” it said.

The AfriForum advocacy group said Selebi, the head of police from 2000 to 2008, was only brought to justice by the now-disbanded and independent Scorpions elite unit.

“Selebi would probably not have been prosecuted if the investigation had been left to a unit that fell directly under his command,” said Nantes Kelder, head of the group’s community safety office.

Opposition politician Bantu Holomisa said the nation had become accustomed to immunity enjoyed by top officials.

“We hope this sends a message that will echo in the halls of power that the culture of impunity that pervades government will not be tolerated,” Holomisa said.

Selebi was a former teacher who in his youth was twice detained without trial for his anti-apartheid activism.

He went into exile in Tanzania and later the Soviet Union, where he underwent military training. After apartheid ended in 1994, he was a member of the first all-race parliament, and later served as the envoy to the UN in Geneva.