Watch VideoPaul 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. Forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivanhas 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. “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. A newspaper photograph depicting O’Sullivan alongside Ramaphosa and a wooden shield was shown to committee members during the proceedings.

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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.

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