Fraud examiner Paul O’Sullivan says President Cyril Ramaphosa was his student in the 1990s while training as a police reservist, Parliament’s ad hoc committee heard.
O’Sullivan appeared before the committee at the Good Hope Chamber in Cape Town on Tuesday.
The inquiry is probing alleged criminal infiltration and political interference in South Africa’s justice system.
Paul O’Sullivan details Saps journey
O’Sullivan explained that he joined the South African police in 1990, a year after moving from the UK.
He took a role as a police reservist at Halfway House, now Midrand, where he trained as a detective and volunteered for a minimum of eight hours per week without pay.
He later worked at Booysens police station for five to six years before a serious on-duty shooting in 1996 left him with major spinal injuries.
Thereafter, he was not involved in physical policing and worked in the fraud unit.
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Following his recovery, O’Sullivan took on a training role at the police academy, lecturing reservists on criminal law, police administration, crime investigation and how to take sworn statements.
It was during this period that Ramaphosa attended one of his courses in 1997.
“Then he wasn’t even a politician. He was a businessman and he sat in on the training course that I was running,” O’Sullivan recalled, adding that Ramaphosa was “a very good student”.
A photo was shown to the committee of Ramaphosa receiving a shield for best student, highlighting his performance in the course.
Tick-box exercise
O’Sullivan highlighted that one of his key modules focused on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
He admitted that he did not have formal legal qualifications, but underwent training on the Constitution at a police training college.
He said the training was designed to ensure that Saps officers understood citizens’ rights.
EFF leader Julius Malema questioned how Ramaphosa would need this training, given that he had been involved in drafting the Constitution.
O’Sullivan acknowledged that the situation was “ironic”, but emphasised that the president accepted the training as “appropriate”.
“The reality of the situation is that in order to be a police reservist, you have to go through a little tick-box exercise. You have to get trained on this and that.
“Even if you were part of the people who wrote it, you are now coming into a system where it has to be demonstrated that you have had that training.
“So, yes, it was quite a strange situation for me because clearly Ramaphosa knew a lot more about the Constitution than I did.”
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