Paul O’Sullivan details to Parliament how he trained Cyril Ramaphosa as a police reservist
Forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan testifies before Parliament’s ad hoc committee as a newspaper photograph showing him alongside President Cyril Ramaphosa during Ramaphosa’s police reservist training in the late 1990s is beamed to Members of Parliament.
Image: Screengrab
Forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan has outlined how he once trained President Cyril Ramaphosa as a police reservist during the early years of South Africa’s democratic era.
O’Sullivan told Parliament’s ad hoc committee that after relocating to South Africa as a tourist and investor, he later became involved with the police, serving as a reservist before undergoing a three-month trainers’ course that allowed him to assist with the training of recruits and reservists.
Around 1997, when Ramaphosa voluntarily enrolled in a police reservist programme — a civilian initiative that allowed members of the public to assist police after basic training — O’Sullivan said the future president was among the students he lectured.
“I had also been working at the police training center where I had been requested to provide lectures. I lectured in criminal law A and B, police administration, crime investigation and the preparation of sworn statements. I did that for a number of years.
"In 1997 one of our students was Cyril Ramaphosa who is today the president of South Africa but then he wasn’t even a politician, he was a businessman. He sat in on the training course that i was running. Because he was a very good student, we subsequently issued … i remember one of the modules I had to train him on, the students police officials on, was the Constitution,” O’Sullivan told the committee.
“The Constitution had only been issued in 1996, now we were in 1997 and it was very important that these police officials should understand.”
Private forensic investigator and self-described whistleblower Paul O'Sullivan appearing before Parliament's Ad Hoc Committee probing allegations of corruption, interference, misconduct, and systemic failures within the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the broader criminal justice system.
Image: Armand Hough / Independent Newspapers
A newspaper photograph depicting O’Sullivan alongside Ramaphosa and a wooden shield was shown to committee members during the proceedings.
Members of Parliament questioned how O’Sullivan could have trained Ramaphosa on constitutional matters, given that the president was among those involved in drafting the Constitution.
“I was quite surprised that one of the students sitting there was Cyril Ramaphosa. I had already met Cyril Ramaphosa previously. I had met him at Wandi’s Place in Soweto. I knew him already. Now suddenly he is a reservist, or a reservist in training. It was quite funny,” he said.
Quizzed on his qualifications to lecture on constitutional matters, O’Sullivan said his training and preparation were rooted in his policing background and consultation with legal experts.
“I had been to the police centre in Paarl, it is actually not far from here, where I did detective training and training of that nature. And then when the Constitution came out, I sat down with, I cannot remember the guy’s name, but I sat down with a constitutional lawyer in Johannesburg because I wanted to understand the Constitution.
“The reason I wanted to understand it is because I wanted to make sure that the new police officials we were training would understand that the citizens of the country had rights that police didn’t have. This sort of thing bothered me as a policeman. When people were being arrested, they would be arrested, that worried me. It wasnt something I liked to see.”
O’Sullivan clarified that his lectures to trainee officers were limited to the Bill of Rights.
Private forensic investigator and self-described whistleblower Paul O'Sullivan appearing before Parliament's Ad Hoc Committee probing allegations of corruption, interference, misconduct, and systemic failures within the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the broader criminal justice system.
Image: Armand Hough / Independent Newspapers
Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema intervened during the session, questioning O’Sullivan’s authority to teach constitutional matters.
“Mr Paul O’Sullivan, you don't have any qualification to train anyone about the Constitution, even at that time, right? Was Cyril not part of the people who developed that Constitution? So you were training him on a Constitution that he helped to draft?” Malema asked.
O’Sullivan responded: “No. There were no qualifications then. I had no qualifications to train anybody in the Constitution. I didn't train them on the Constitution, I trained them on the Bill of Rights. He was part of the people that drafted the Constitution.
“Cyril had to be trained as a police reservist. He chose to be trained as a police reservist. Ironically, the training included understanding the Bill of Rights. It doesn't deal with the whole Constitution. It dealt with the Bill of Rights and police ethics, so we had a module on that.
"It was ironic that Cyril had to listen to training on the Constitution, but the good news is, he agreed fully that the training that the people were getting was correct. He was quite comfortable with that because he endorsed the quality of the training that we were giving to the police students," said O'Sullivan.
The issue of Ramaphosa’s participation in the police reservist programme has resurfaced amid O’Sullivan’s testimony before the ad hoc committee, which is probing allegations of interference, corruption, and misconduct within the South African Police Service and the broader law enforcement apparatus.
IOL News