Will our top cops ever learn to keep their noses clean?

We, and no doubt the nation at large, or at least the majority, would have hoped that the South African Police Service top brass and all police officers would have learnt the lesson of the Jackie Selebi fiasco.

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Appointed as the national police commissioner as of January 1, 2000, by then President Thabo Mbeki, there were no eyebrows raised as Selebi had covered himself in glory as a diplomat and the director-general of the ministry of foreign affairs, and generally as a public servant, and before that as a parliamentarian.

He was a Struggle hero, and many had no qualms with the elevation of such a decorated man to the highest office in a then-transforming police service, which was morphing from an apartheid apparatus to embrace service to the people.

At least that was the plan.

But as the police machine reinvented itself into an apparatus compatible with the new democratic dispensation of a post-1994 South Africa, the going got tougher as crime also soared.