Why the twin inquiries into police corruption is our new #Guptaleaks moment

Many South Africans are understandably anxious at what has been exposed about industrial-scale police criminality in two top-level probes, one parliamentary and the other a judicial inquiry.

Patience and endurance will be required during this white-knuckle ride where the guardrails protecting the country’s constitutional democracy are once again going to be tested.

It was 2017 when what was known as the #Guptaleaks served to expose the collective R57-billion siphoned out of the country by the Zuma/Gupta nexus between 2009 and 2018 – peak State Capture.

Read more: Ten revelations from the #GuptaLeaks that changed the course of SA

The guardrails held despite a prolonged and relentless attack.

Parliament’s ad-hoc committee probing police graft as well as the portentously titled Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Criminality, Political Interference, and Corruption in the Criminal Justice System (known as the Madlanga Commission) is our new #Guptaleaks moment.

While the Zondo and other commissions, inquiries and court matters exposed dirty palace politics, we are now heading for the ugly nitty-gritty down below.

And since the icing of the Inspector General of Intelligence, Imtiaz Fazel, the office has gone dark. All investigations iced. The lights are off as they were during Zuma’s disastrous tenure.

The thin blue line

With SAPS top brass at each other’s throats, a Minister of Police (Senzo Mchunu) placed on special leave, and a now suspended Inspector General of Intelligence (Fazel), only the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac), led by advocate Andrea Johnson, stands between the criminals and those seeking to expose them.

The Special Investigating Unit (SIU), in the meantime, has been working overtime netting several high-profile suspected crime-syndicate kingpins, including Thembisa Hospital corruption scandal accused Hangwani Maumela.

Idac arrested Vusimusi “Cat” Matlala, friend of former minister of police – “Cat in The Hat” General Bheki Cele — and SAPS pulled in alleged hitman mastermind Katiso “KT” Molefe.

Read more: Registration of ‘Cat’ Matlala’s private security company sparks shakeup at industry watchdog

Cele, at the late former minister of police Nathi Mthethwa’s funeral on 12 October, told media he would explain his relationship with Matlala to the committee. Mthethwa, who plunged to his death in Paris on 30 September, would have ended up on the witness list.

Read more: Nathi Mthethwa’s silent and untouchable hand behind illegal Zuma, State Capture prosecutions

Matlala is now facing charges of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering. Matlala had allegedly taken out a hit on his former girlfriend, Tebogo Thobejane.

Molefe was arrested after KZN Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi accused him at a press conference of masterminding the murders of nightclub owner Oupa John Sefoka, also known as DJ Sumbody, and his two protectors Sibusiso Mokoena and Sandile Myeza. Molefe was granted R400,000 bail last week.

Suspended Deputy National Commissioner of Crime Detection, Shadrack Sibiya, who has been at loggerheads with Mkhwanazi, has dismissed allegations that he was behind the push to disband the task team.

A deep wound

Mkhwanazi’s surprise July media conference ripped the scab off a wound that runs so deep in law enforcement that committee members now seek to call in the country’s former ANC presidents – Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe and Cyril Ramaphosa.

Former Cabinet ministers are also on the list, including ex minister of police and current ANC Secretary General, Fikile Mbalula.

Meanwhile,  evidence leaders at the Madlanga Commission have suggested that material in their possession is so explosive that it is best held in camera. 

Read more: Daily Maverick and News24 challenge Madlanga Commission’s push for in-camera testimony

It appears the legal arrows aimed at the bullseye are being notched in that neck of the inquiry woods. 

Hidden truths, should these finally come to light, will be hard to swallow for the ANC which is hoping to deep-clean itself into the future.

Party plunder of secret funds

Marathon testimony given at both inquiries points to links with the highest echelons of the party who allegedly sanctioned the plundering of both the Crime Intelligence slush fund as well as the State Security agencies pot of gold to fund intra-party factionalism.

With former minister of state security David Mahlobo (now serving as Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation) as head and Arthur Fraser (still a free man) as the DG, the Zondo Commission heard how millions in cash were casually driven out of the SSA headquarters in Pretoria.

Read more: Cash ‘parcels’ to minister, spying on media and infiltration of anti-Zuma movement highlighted in report on SA spy agency

Evidence, for example, is available in sworn statements on “Operation Hibela” which came to light in court proceedings in the Tshwane Commercial Crimes Court in 2018, where crime intelligence operative Morris Lesiba Selaki Tshabalala, aka “Captain KGB”, appeared on charges of fraud, theft and corruption. 

Tshabalala escaped imprisonment and continued to work as a Crime Intelligence operative right up until 2015.

During his court appearance on 19 January 2018, state prosecutor Chris Smith revealed that Tshabalala had headed an intelligence operation at the ANC’s Mangaung elective conference and had been given a R50-million budget, which had not been accounted for.

Read more: ANC slate politics — from Mangaung to Polokwane and Nasrec, SAPS Crime Intelligence always showed up

The downfall of Zuma

The #Guptaleaks led to Zuma’s downfall in 2018 and loosened his grip on the former liberation movement before Mandela’s original choice as a successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, was handed the poisoned chalice at Nasrec in 2017.

And even here, SAPS Crime Intelligence is implicated in attempting to siphon R45-million from the slush fund for the bogus purchase of a “grabber” or surveillance device, “to buy votes”.

Former president Zuma, having used the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa as a bullet-proof shield and despite being implicated in an attempted coup in KZN in 2021, just kept on trucking.

It is public knowledge that during his tenure as president of the Republic of South Africa he personalised and weaponised the State Security and Crime Intelligence agencies.

Read more: Smash the State Security Agency piggy bank – and its apartheid roots

After losing the battle to lead the ANC,  Zuma launched his fractious family party, uMkhonto WeSizwe (MK), now the country’s official opposition in camouflage, with members seated in the police committee about to expose this all. 

What are they going to do when the snake eats its tail?

Quarantined

President Ramaphosa moved unusually swiftly to place Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu on special leave, pending an investigation into allegations that his instruction to shut down the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) – which operated almost exclusively in KZN – was malevolent.

The sidelining of Mchunu quarantines him from the quagmire, for now, and he has told the ad-hoc committee that he could not justify the expense of operations by the PKTT only in KZN when children were dying daily from gang violence in the Cape Flats and the rest of the country.

As colleague Stephen Grootes has asked before, could this entire saga be part of a rumoured campaign to scupper Mchunu’s chance of leading the ANC after Ramaphosa?

Read more: Ramaphosa’s quest — to unriddle the KZN police enigma

Mkhwanazi was clearly angered by Mchunu’s decision to disband the PKTT and suggested the minister had done so as he had connections to ANC-aligned businessman Brown Mogotsi. These are allegations Mchunu has denied.

Mogotsi, in turn, has been accused of acting as an intermediary between Mchunu and Matlala. Mchunu has confirmed knowing Mogotsi, but said he knew nothing of communications between Mogotsi and Matlala.

Mogotsi’s premises in Mahikeng were raided by the SAPS while Mchunu was testifying to the committee.

Grootes also correctly noted that taken all together, “this suggests that we have security services that are no longer under the control of either the President or our democratic state”.

Restoring legitimacy will either cost the ANC, where assassins lurk, or it will cost South Africa its 30-year democracy. Either way, we are again at a crossroads. DM