Mchunu’s repeated reference to Cape Flats killings underscores the politics-gangsterism nexus

If we take sidelined Police Minister Senzo Mchunu for his word, he was incredibly worried about violence continuously claiming lives in Cape Town suburbs that have become known as gang hotspots.

This crisis seems to have tormented him to the point that he cited it as among the reasons he issued a highly controversial directive, on 31 December 2024, to disband KwaZulu-Natal’s Political Killings Task Team (PKTT). 

“If you keep on funding one unit somewhere in one corner of the country, even if they do well, they are not going to deal with criminality in the Cape Flats.

“Our consciences are going to be gouged on an hourly basis because, every time there is a death in the Cape Flats, you are asked: ‘What are you doing about it?’ You can’t say: ‘I have the Political Killings Task Team’ which is operating in one corner,” Mchunu recently told Parliament’s ad hoc committee.

About 400 people, he said, were killed over three or four months on the Cape Flats.

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Mchunu, an ANC politician, testified at the committee over several days, concluding his time as a witness on Wednesday, 22 October 2025.

The ad hoc committee is investigating allegations that a drug trafficking cartel has infiltrated South Africa’s law enforcement and politics.

Mchunu has been accused of, among other things, being influenced to order the PKTT disbandment because certain crime suspects were under the impression this would derail investigations into them.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

The politics of gangsterism

Mchunu’s repeated mention of the “Cape Flats” in the ad hoc committee refers to the sandy Cape Town suburbs spread out from Table Mountain where residents - many classified as “coloured” - were forced to move under apartheid’s racist Group Areas Act.

These poorly resourced and densely populated suburbs are further away from the city centre - the business hub.

While home to countless upstanding residents, over the years they have become known as gang violence hotspots.

Gangsterism, meanwhile, stretches deep into moneyed residential and business areas where it is simply better disguised and does not manifest as frequently in shootings.

Read more: ‘94 murders in 3 days’ — Western Cape ‘war zone’ killings exceed European country’s annual fatal shootings

Dozens of killings, in and around the Cape Flats, sometimes happen over just a few days.

Innocent children are among those murdered and maimed.

Politics creeps in among these unmitigated tragedies.

Apartheid police and state security operatives used gangsters to do some of their dirty work - commit crimes - and also controlled certain gang bosses.

Certain activists in the anti-apartheid movement also partnered with gangsters in the struggle for democracy.

There are theories, in policing circles at least, that some political figures under apartheid also brokered deals with gang bosses to get the political backing of their support bases.

Up to this day, there are still murmurs in those policing circles that strong ties - between gangs and political players - exist.

Read more: SA’s organised crime optics — suspicions blur lines between ‘gangsters’, celebrities and flashy politicians

Let’s not forget that the Mail & Guardian previously reported that former president Jacob Zuma met several top gangsters in 2011 as part of a plan to wrest control of the Western Cape - South Africa’s gang capital and the province in which Cape Town is situated - from the DA to the ANC. 

Several sources insisted the meeting happened, while the ANC denied it.

Gangsterism in the province is tightly tied to various types of lawbreaking, including drug trafficking.

‘A crisis’

This brings us back to Mchunu, who repeatedly referenced the Cape Flats during his testimony at the parliamentary ad hoc committee.

Mchunu told MPs he once had a virtual meeting with National Police Commissioner Fannie Masemola and said he told Masemola, “I cannot tolerate what is happening in the Western Cape.”

At another point Mchunu, again referencing the Cape Flats, testified that the police did not have the “machinery” to deal with people carrying guns.

Mchunu was appointed police minister at the end of June last year (he has said he never anticipated this, which suggests his understanding of the policing arena was not rock solid).

He was placed on special leave, because of the accusations he now faces, in July this year.

During Mchunu’s active time as minister, he does not appear to have been as publicly vocal about the gang crisis plaguing the Western Cape as he has been at the ad hoc committee.

Read more: ‘No proper plan in Cape Town to deal with gang violence,’ says Firoz Cachalia

Mchunu’s acting successor, Firoz Cachalia, made a shocking admission last month - that “there is no proper plan in Cape Town to deal with gang violence in the province”.

In a speech, Cachalia had also described the situation in the Western Cape as “a crisis that is tearing our communities apart, extinguishing lives and undermining hope for the future amongst our people”.

Earlier this month, Cachalia announced a development, a strategy to try to combat gangsterism and extortion.

But all this invites the question: What did Mchunu, during his short one-year active tenure as police minister, really do about the problem if he was so worried about it?

He has, of course, said this was why he wanted the PKTT disbanded, so that policing resources could be better allocated against a tight budget.

Mchunu and Matlala

Aside from his controversial PKTT disbandment directive, Mchunu is also entangled in accusations that Gauteng crime accused Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala was financially backing his political aspirations.

Matlala is currently behind bars because he faces attempted murder and money laundering charges.

He also faces accusations he is a member of a cartel known as the Big Five and is allegedly tied to ANC-aligned businessman Brown Mogotsi, who Mchunu admitted knowing.

Read more: Mchunu uses ‘dangerous man’ crime accused Matlala’s affidavit to defend himself

Mchunu recently reiterated to Parliament’s ad hoc committee that he views Mogotsi as a political “comrade”, not as an associate.

The accusations against Mchunu, as well as several others, were initially made by KwaZulu-Natal’s police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.

Mkhwanazi has already been a witness in Parliament’s ad hoc committee and at a parallel hearing also investigating his accusations, the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry.

Crime Intelligence

Among the many individuals he has testified about is National Coloured Congress leader Fadiel Adams, who is based in Cape Town.

Mkhwanazi alleged in his testimony to the ad hoc committee that Adams had “unauthorised access to intelligence information”.

According to Mkhwanazi, late last year Adams lodged criminal complaints with Western Cape and Gauteng police about vetting processes and the alleged abuse of the secret service fund in the Crime Intelligence unit.

Mkhwanazi had also testified that Adams emailed Mchunu about those cases, saying something about “efforts to undermine” them, and Mchunu expedited the matter.

Read more: Khumalo arrest — cops warned that Crime Intelligence clean-up would spark State Capture-style backlash

This seems to have culminated in the arrest of Crime Intelligence head Dumisani Khumalo, who was also helping to manage the PKTT, along with six colleagues earlier this year.

They face charges, which they have denied, over an allegedly irregular appointment.

Mkhwanazi implied Khumalo was arrested as part of the plan to derail critical investigations (roughly the same reason he alleges Mchunu was influenced to disband the PKTT). 

For his part, Adams, in a television interview and reacting to Mkhwanazi’s testimony about him, had said: “I don’t know why General Mkhwanazi is so fixated on me. 

“Is he fixated because I have been the reason his buddy General Khumalo is now before the court for alleged fraud and corruption? I don’t understand.”

City of Cape Town and Smith

Zoom in here towards Adams and Cape Town, and more unsettling political-policing matters emerge.

Adams has been open about his distaste towards the DA, and its Cape Town mayoral committee member for safety and security JP Smith.

The feeling, based on social media posts, is mutual.

In January this year, Smith’s offices, along with fellow City of Cape Town councillor Xanthea Limberg’s, were raided.

This was part of an investigation into, among others, 28s gang boss accused Ralph Stanfield and his wife Nicole Johnson, who were allegedly involved in dubious city-tender activities.

At the time of the raids, Smith said that he believed he was the target of a smear campaign and that he was “reliably informed that senior ANC politicians have been briefed by members within the [police service]”.

He and Limberg legally challenged the raids and last month the Western Cape Division of the High Court declared them unlawful.

In reaction to this, Smith said: “When the City started arresting hundreds of drug dealers and gangsters with illegal firearms, it caused little interest in our activity. 

“It was only when the impact of these investigations was felt by the heads of these syndicates, that the attacks turned personal.”

He also acknowledged the high-level accusations that Mkhwanazi made.

Smith said it “rang true” that “a member of the National Assembly had been given confidential police documents as part of a political smear campaign”. 

The “member of the National Assembly” appeared to be a reference to Adams.

Read more: JP Smith says unlawful office raid aligns with Mkhwanazi’s dirty politics accusations

Smith had also said: “The claims that Minister Mchunu had been briefed on criminal cases sounded familiar, as I know for a fact that he had been briefed on the plans to search my office.”

Mchunu does not appear to have officially responded to this.

Smith’s assertions suggest he was a target of a vast plot to impede critical investigations - this aligns with what Mkhwanazi has alleged.

These are the allegations that are being tested in Parliament’s ad hoc committee and the Madlanga Commission.

Political landscape

The City of Cape Town, where Cape Flats suburbs are situated, is run by the DA.

Meanwhile, the South African Police Service is widely viewed as an ANC remit.

This sometimes results in finger-pointing between the DA and ANC about who should be doing what to tackle crime, including gangsterism.

Gang collusion accusations, meanwhile, have cropped up in both parties (and extend to others).

Read more: City of Collusion — the gang suspects and ex-officials accused of crafting Cape Town’s real ‘construction mafia’

Think of the alleged meeting between Zuma and top gangsters, and 28s gang boss accused Stanfield and the City of Cape Town tender investigation saga.

A decade ago in a newsletter, the DA’s Helen Zille, at that stage Western Cape premier, asked: “Could it be that there is a deliberate political strategy, involving high-ranking police officers and politicians, to ensure that gangs, drugs and crime continue to destabilise the Western Cape?”

Remove Zille as the author and replace “Western Cape” with “South Africa”, and this is essentially what Mkhwanazi has now put to the country.

Politics, in whatever way, is clearly at play here. It would be naïve to think otherwise.

Next year marks municipal elections in South Africa.

Politicians will inevitably use realities like the gang violence crisis to try to gain votes.

If they have the genuine will to crack down on the incessant killings, they should not be faulted.

History suggests, though, that this arena has an honesty deficit running through it.

Read more: 28s gang ‘capture’ top Western Cape cops, prosecutors’ lives at risk – judge sounds corruption alarm

In the three decades that South Africa has been a democracy, crimes including white-collar lawbreaking and gang violence have not been adequately addressed.

These crimes bolster each other. 

Mchunu, testifying at the parliamentary hearings, said: “So we’re going to come to the Western Cape and make excuses: ‘We are trying’…

“But in reality, when you go to sleep alone as minister of police, your conscience doesn’t give you peace because you are aware you are not doing much on the ground where you are required to do something.”

The sincerity of his words aside, the reality is that a “conscience” can be bought.

Accusations relating to sold consciences are in effect what led to Mchunu testifying about Cape Flats violence and killings in the first place. 

The tragic truth is that residents there are not simply surviving a wave of violent criminality that local and national governments are battling to contain. 

They are undoubtedly enduring the brutal consequences of bought consciences in positions of power. DM