Shadrack Sibiya, once the country’s second-highest-ranking police officer, spent Tuesday standing before a magistrate, accused of crimes against the very people he was once sworn to protect.
Sibiya, the suspended deputy police commissioner, appeared in the Randburg Magistrate’s Court facing charges of sexually grooming a minor, child trafficking and rape. The state alleges he sexually groomed a 16-year-old girl between July and August, and that he raped an 18-year-old woman at a Sandton hotel in May.
For now, he will not return home. The matter was postponed until 29 September for a bail hearing, and he will remain in custody at Kgosi Mampuru correctional facility until then, according to National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago. “He will be taken to Kgosi Mampuru up until the 29th of September,” Kganyago said.
The state opposed bail on two grounds: concerns about possible witness intimidation, and evidence suggesting Sibiya could escape if he were held at a police station rather than a correctional facility.
His arrest on Monday came at a strip club, carried out by members of the Commission’s Recommendations Task Team working from evidence gathered by the Madlanga commission.
Outside the courthouse, one of his associates offered a sharply different account of what the arrest means. Bishop Lawrence Maumela defended Sibiya, saying he had been arrested as part of a “succession battle” within the South African Police Service.
Sibiya himself has consistently rejected the allegations that have trailed his career. He has described them as fabrications arising from internal power struggles in the SAPS. Those controversies are not new. He has been accused of accepting regular payments from Jotham “King Mswazi” Msibi, an alleged Big Five cartel leader, and he conceded that he met Vusimuzi “CAT” Matlala, who required assistance in the Medicare24 contract. KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi previously accused Sibiya of removing 120 dockets from the Political Killings Task Team at the behest of criminal cartels.
His path to the top of the police hierarchy began modestly, as a student constable climbing through the ranks, before controversy came to shadow his role at the highest levels of the service.
Meanwhile, Acting national police commissioner Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane welcomed the arrest on charges relating to sexual offences, and framed the case in terms of the trust placed in those who wear the uniform. “Police officers are entrusted with protecting women and children. They cannot themselves be implicated in conduct that undermines this responsibility,” she said. “As the country continues to confront the scourge of gender-based violence and femicide, there can be no room for anyone within the police service who is alleged to abuse their position or violate the rights of women and children.”
Dimpane added that rank, position or seniority should not place anyone above the law. “Where credible allegations of criminal conduct are brought against a police officer, they must be investigated without fear or favour,” she said.
The bail hearing on 29 September will determine whether Sibiya’s weeks at Kgosi Mampuru extend further, as the charges against him play out in court.