EDITORIAL: Madlanga inquiry opens window to police clean-out

All sides in the impasse within the SA Police Service (SAPS) and between senior police officials and minister Senzo Mchunu should be heard before judgment is made. This is obvious. The evidence being heard before the Madlanga inquiry over the past three weeks has been damning — but it remains one side of the story. The other side should provide a more complete picture, but it is natural to be aghast at the emerging revelations. 

The big picture encapsulates the sad reality that the criminal justice system broadly, and the police in particular, have long been left to fester and rot — it is long overdue for a cleanup.

The commission is tasked by President Cyril Ramaphosa and chaired by former chief justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga to investigate criminality and political interference in the criminal justice system. It was sparked by revelations in an explosive press conference in July by KwaZulu-Natal provincial police boss

Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, who alleged that Mchunu and deputy police commissioner Lt-Gen Shadrack Sibiya were acting in cahoots with known criminal cartels when they disbanded the political killings task team. 

Before going public, Mkhwanazi sought to address the matter internally and also turned to parliament. After receiving little relief, he held a dramatic press conference in which he took the nation into his confidence about what he believed was behind the disbanding of the relatively successful task team, set up in 2018 by an interministerial committee. 

This week, crime intelligence boss Dumisani Khumalo took up the hot seat at the commission, describing the existence of an insidious cartel operating out of Gauteng, the “Big Five”. He named two murder accused as part of the cartel: Vusimuzi Matlala and Katiso Molefe. The cartel’s operations ranged from drug trafficking and extortion to kidnapping, tender fraud, contract killings and vehicle hijacking, Khumalo testified. 

Matlala allegedly had influence over top-ranking police officials.

The evidence was certainly explosive, providing a hint to the commission and the law-abiding public of what the police are up against as they execute their responsibilities.

Experts have long outlined the severe problems hobbling the functioning of the police: it is top heavy, factionalised and getting the very basics wrong, including entry and promotional requirements for police officers.

Jacob Zuma’s presidency was marked by interference in the criminal justice system that significantly weakened it, leaving it riddled by factions and even captured by competing interest groups. 

Experts have long outlined the severe problems hobbling the functioning of the police: it is top heavy, factionalised and getting the very basics wrong, including entry and promotional requirements for police officers. Experts ranging from the Institute for Security Studies to independent policing analysts have long cited this as a problem. 

The police is the biggest public sector institution in the government. It has become somewhat of an employment agency and has been saddled with weak leadership inside it and weak political leadership on the outside. In an interview with the Financial Mail in 2022, SA’s first police commissioner after 1994, George Fivaz, said a “fish rotted from its head”, a key problem facing the police then. At the time, he said the “rot at senior levels was filtered down to their juniors”. 

The second problem, which to a degree forms part of the terms of reference of the commission of inquiry, is that successive ministers of police have been meddling too much in the business of policing and have been inactive when it came to their primary task: developing and rolling out policy for the police in line with global standards.

Think former police minister Bheki Cele (whose name has also been linked in the commission to the criminal underworld). He spent most of his time visiting crime scenes and shouting at police officers over their body art.

Mchunu is new to the portfolio, and if the allegations that he disbanded the task team due to prompting from criminal gangs are true, he would have done so just six months after his appointment. He was appointed to the police portfolio on June 30 and disbanded the team in December. If the allegations are true, he was captured pretty quickly, or acting in cahoots with his predecessor? 

The Madlanga inquiry marks a small opening to tackle the single largest threat to the country and the economy: a bloated, factionalised and partly corrupted police force.