There are two parallel probes into police corruption currently underway on separate constitutionally-mandated platforms. They reveal deep-seated weaknesses in governance, possible political intrusion in police operations, and a need to overhaul arguably the most critical operation in the criminal justice system.
But more than that, the evidence revealed so far tells us what we already know: corruption begets violence and an unfair advantage for the corrupt, particularly when they enjoy protection from the most powerful offices. Thus, no whistle-blower will be safe until the laws that govern protection and its enforcement are enhanced to protect them.
Police criminality
On 10 July 2024, just a week after the official announcement of the government of national unity, Parliament’s portfolio committee on police met for the first time in this administration. In a media statement released the next day, the committee raised concerns about the “attrition” of the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) crime intelligence and detective services divisions, and pledged its support. Highlighting these units’ under-capacitation in a strained environment, the committee declared its “immense responsibility to ensure that the SAPS management put in place strategies to remedy capacity challenges within the detective services and crime intelligence divisions”.
A year later – almost to the day – came President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of the establishment of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference, and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System, known as the ‘Madlanga Commission’ after former Constitutional Court Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, who chairs it. Its mandate is to probe serious allegations regarding top police structures, and his decision to place Police Minister Senzo Mchunu on special leave pending the investigation.
The probe followed public backlash after the 6 July media conference by KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi. At that conference, he named Mchunu and the deputy SAPS national commissioner responsible for detectives, Shadrack Sibiya, among those who enjoy inappropriate relationships with organised crime syndicates. Both immediately denied the allegations.
What has since surfaced before the Madlanga commission are details of this impropriety and alleged abuse of power across several ranks.
The evidence so far
We’ve heard that, at the root of the issues leading up to Mkhwanazi’s statements, is Mchunu’s intention, expressed in a 31 December 2024 letter to SAPS leadership, to dissolve the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT). This task team was initiated in 2018 to curb the spate of murders of local politicians in KZN. In their defence, Mchunu and Sibiya have characterised the project as an operationally unsustainable entity that the SAPS should consider reconfiguring for wider reach.
Mkhwanazi, National Police Commissioner Major-General Fannie Masemola, and crime intelligence head Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo have conceded that reviewing the task team’s mandate and make-up may be prudent. But they also maintain that this may not be the real reason for the call for dissolution. The PKTT, they have argued, started off as a SAPS project, but over time morphed into an inter-departmental affair, whose strategic planning happened through a security cluster inter-ministerial committee. On the ground, they say, it was run as an efficient instrument accounting for how it met its targets.
Mkhwanazi and Khumalo have further lamented what they say is Mchunu’s bad faith. They say that he claimed to act in the best interest of the SAPS, but failed to consider all stakeholders needed for a phase-out process. Importantly, the commission is yet to hear from Mchunu. However, both he and Sibiya have appeared before the parliamentary ad hoc committee also probing the corruption allegations. The committee has not heard the level of operational details brought before Madlanga, but has so far heard from key policy players in policing matters.
The case for the PKTT
The PKTT, according to Khumalo, who is also its project manager, has been instrumental in its core work of political killings investigations. But it provoked the wrong people when its members began to link crime incidents in Gauteng to the infiltration of SAPS leadership by organised crime players, specifically the Big Five cartel, who allegedly enjoy protection from the top brass.
The mistaken-identity murder of engineer Armand Swart in Vereeniging in April 2024 became the moment of discovery for the Gauteng counter-intelligence operations team working on the case. Khumalo had deployed some of the PKTT’s investigative specialists to support the team. They inadvertently uncovered links to businessmen and alleged cartel members Katiso Molefe and Vusimuzi Cat Matlala, who are alleged to have ties to both Mchunu and Sibiya, among others in SAPS leadership.
Varying evidence before the commission alleges that Matlala relied on these ties in securing a R360 million tender in 2024 to provide wellness services to the SAPS, despite being implicated in fraud and corruption relating to other procurement processes. While the contract has since been terminated, it was allegedly irregularly entered into with Sibiya’s assistance, as Matlala’s highest-ranking connection at the SAPS operational level. It is important to note that this has so far been hearsay evidence. Some of it was reportedly recounted by detectives who participated in the investigation and subsequent arrest of Matlala in May this year on a separate charge.
The detectives have testified to Madlanga on Molefe, linking him to Swart’s murder as the mastermind who ordered the hit, albeit on the wrong individual. The hit order, the detectives have surmised, was to eliminate a whistle-blower in a fraud investigation involving state company Transnet. Molefe’s nephew, Lucky Molefe, a Transnet employee at the time of the murder, was an implicated party. Lucky remains at large.
Matlala and Katiso Molefe meet in their Big Five involvement, which Khumalo has characterised as a network known for overseeing planned ATM bombings, contract killings, and kidnappings, among other crimes.
Who protects the protectors?
Whistleblower Babita Deokaran was murdered on 23 August 2021. Corruption begets violence and an unfair advantage for the corrupt, particularly when they enjoy protection from the most powerful offices. No whistle-blower will be safe until the laws that govern protection and its enforcement are enhanced to protect them.
Extremely concerning, too, is the fact that the detectives who effected the arrests of these seemingly powerful individuals are themselves victims of alleged bullying, security threats, and smearing.
Three of them have had to appear in camera before the commission, as they are in witness protection and fear for their safety. They concluded their testimonies with chilling accounts of how their investigative work in pursuing the two and their associates has impacted their lives. But they were clear in their views that witness protection does not guarantee their safety indefinitely.
Witnesses A, B, and C, as they are known to the commission, all spoke of being uprooted from their families when most South Africans enjoy quality family time in the festive December holidays, and now living a shadow of their former lives.
Recalling their intimidation at the first bail appearance of Molefe’s co-accused in the Swart murder at a Vereeniging court in 2024, Witness B told the commission that it was not unusual for investigating officers to be the targets of threats. But starkly unnerving for her was the realisation that this time they were unsafe even from their own. The detectives’ testimonies revealed incidents of interference across different SAPS levels as they proceeded with their investigations.
Their full-time protection arose from a threat analysis assessment by their supervisor. But the long-standing brazen disregard for the letter of the law by other senior officials begs the question: we know that even those who fight organised crime in its many facets are vulnerable to the same threats as ordinary members of society – so what will happen after the Madlanga and parliamentary processes? Will there be an appetite to overhaul the country’s whistle-blower protection and support mechanisms to make them truly effective in the fight against persistent corruption and lawlessness?
Urgent intervention needed
Corruption Watch was one of many civil society organisations that contributed to the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) discussion paper on whistle-blowing in 2023, fresh on the heels of Ramaphosa’s implementation plan for the Zondo recommendations. The DoJ team deserves kudos for significant research into the best possible mechanisms for legislative restructuring of whistle-blower protection, with numerous examples from other countries. But we have not seen the next phase of this process.
Even when we do see it, civil society should mobilise and encourage the public to partake in this critical process, and we must do so with a clear understanding of the urgency of the situation. Police officers like the Madlanga witnesses risked all to bring prosecution-ready cases of well-connected accused before our courts. There must be unwavering and intentional protection and support for them, regardless of factors such as cost. It remains one of the only ways to win the war against corruption: protecting whistle-blowers and those to whom they report.
The police committee must work to rebuild the capacity it refers to in its statement, while also ensuring permanent policy changes for police best practice standards. As a society under siege from lawlessness, we should all insist on the protection of corruption investigators and whistle-blowers, regardless of the sector in which they operate.
Moepeng Talane is a senior journalist and editor with the civil society organisation Corruption Watch.
