BY KGOTHATSO MADISA AND ERNEST MABUZA
Former police minister Bheki Cele this week questioned his successor Senzo Mchunu’s decision to disband the political killings task team (PKTT), telling the parliamentary ad hoc committee his reasons for doing so did not make sense.
Cele said Mchunu was supposed to have consulted the interministerial committee on political killings (IMC) and rejected his claim that this cabinet structure had automatically ceased to exist after the 2024 elections.
Cele said the IMC was established after President Cyril Ramaphosa took over from Jacob Zuma in 2018 and continued to exist after the 2019 elections, rubbishing Mchunu’s version that after each general election the structure automatically dissolves.
Evidence leader Norman Arendse SC asked Cele, “What is your response to … Mchunu saying the IMC was disestablished?” He replied by saying, “By whom? Disestablished by whom?”
Arendse said Mchunu had not been clear about who he believed had disbanded the IMC, despite questions from MPs on the committee in this regard.
Cele said, “The president instructs the ministries, [and] the ministers go there. … The team is formed, the team starts the work, and [it] will [then] agree that maybe [it is] not going on details of the success and all that. It continues up to the end of the fifth administration [and] come the sixth administration it continues … I don’t remember … those we were working with talking about dismantling this team at all.”
Senior cops ultimately end up interfering [in investigations], tampering with evidence, and creating a space for criminality and crime to flourish.
— Andy Mashaile, security analyst
“What I would also remember is that … on March 7 2024 the same team went to brief the president about the activities they were doing in Fort Hare … So this is now March 2024, [heading towards the] elections [in] May. So this team is still active … I don’t remember the team being disbanded until I saw the letter that was written on December 31.”
Cele also told the ad hoc committee that national police commissioner Fannie Masemola is too nice, and that he ought to have challenged Mchunu’s directive to disband the PKTT.
He said this was because the PKTT was an operational matter that was within Masemola’s purview, and not a policy matter forming part of Mchunu’s job.
Cele also told the commissioner he knew Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala and had accepted “freebies” from him, including accommodation at one of his plush abodes.
He said he was a pensioner and would have declared such gifts if he had still been employed by the state.
Meanwhile, the evidence of three witnesses at the Madlanga commission this week reveals a worrying link between the criminal underworld and some members of the police service who are apparently doing work at the bidding of criminals.
This is according to two experts following the testimony given by these witnesses.
In his explosive media briefing in July, KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi claimed that deputy national commissioner Lt-Gen Shadrack Sibiya had obstructed justice, stalled investigations into political assassinations and organised crime, and shielded politically connected suspects.
Further allegations implicated police minister Senzo Mchunu, suggesting links to controversial figures such as Matlala, who faces serious criminal charges but reportedly remains politically protected while benefiting from lucrative police contracts.
The three witnesses who testified in camera are involved in some of the investigations into the alleged criminal masterminds.
Witness A testified Sibiya was not happy about the police failing to detain murder accused Katiso “KT” Molefe at a local police station after arresting him at his Sandhurst house last December. Witness A also testified that, after Molefe’s arrest for the murder of Vereeniging engineer Armand Swart, he received a call from a member of the public. The person said, “The person you arrested is a person of the generals. You are fighting the generals by arresting Molefe.”
Witness B testified that, in one of the cases her team was investigating, she encountered interference from her superiors.
Witness C testified that, during the police search at Matlala’s Centurion home in December last year, Matlala told them he was closely connected to Sibiya, SAPS crime intelligence head Feroz Khan and organised crime boss Richard Shibiri.
Political analyst Prof André Duvenhage said from the testimony it appeared Sibiya was the crucial link between the police and the criminal underworld.
Duvenhage also said Witness A mentioned an incident in Sandhurst where a helicopter belonging to the Gauteng traffic police transporting Hawks members came to interrupt police officers on the ground who were there to arrest Molefe.
“The question is who took the decision. It seems police commissioner Gen [Fannie] Masemola was not involved,” Duvenhage said.
“We have seen evidence that these tenderpreneurs or alleged criminals were involved in giving money for election campaigns for individuals [and] probably funding [the] ANC for the January 8 celebrations.”
Duvenhage said members of the parliamentary ad hoc committee were doing their utmost when interviewing former police minister Bheki Cele and Mchunu to establish a link between the political world and the criminal world.
He said witnesses at the commission and the ad hoc committee were showing there was a link between the political environment and the criminal environment.
“The core question that should be investigated is: is it true criminal cartels are influencing the police, to the extent that [they] are not acting [for] the common good but [for] an exclusive criminal elite?”
Security analyst Andy Mashaile said the Madlanga commission and the ad hoc committee had opened the eyes of South Africans to how the criminal underworld was controlling top cops.
“Senior cops ultimately end up interfering, tampering with evidence, and creating a space for criminality and crime to flourish.”
Mashaile said he had known for a number of years police were allowing organised crime kingpins to prosper.
Mashaile said this state of affairs suggested there was much to do in terms of vetting and removing bad apples from the police service, to ensure crime-fighting was not infiltrated by criminals.
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