MAKHUDU SEFARA | Witness D’s murder underscores police failures

The callous murder of Marius “Vlam” van der Merwe — known to most as Witness D — is an indictment of the police management charged with keeping him safe, and of the Madlanga commission itself.

At this time, the motive hardly matters. Whether he was killed for helping shut down routes used by zama zamas, as some suggest, or for his explosive testimony before the Madlanga commission, the outcome for his traumatised wife and family is the same. He is gone — professionally wasted by beasts passing for humans.

What did he contribute? Witness D told us about the torture of a suspected robber, the brute force used, the resultant death and an attempted cover-up that he said was ordered by suspended Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department (EMPD) chief Julius Mkhwanazi. He testified that he complied out of fear — my emphasis — as a then-EMPD official. When his conscience got the better of him, he reported the matter to the police.

Witness D — the hero that Van der Merwe will remain to many of us — should not have perished in such a shocking manner. We are told he was a maverick, turning down police protection because he ran his own security firm. It beggars belief that police management accepted this explanation. The fact that he chose — and the Madlanga commission agreed — to keep his identity secret was evidence enough that he was afraid, my emphasis. Now the very thing he feared has happened.

In a normal society, someone like Witness D would at least be monitored, even if not given full-time personal security to ensure he did not place his own life — and that of his family — at risk. Where individuals take decisions that make them vulnerable, police crime intelligence or the State Security Agency should step in, offering protection witnesses may not realise they need. Even in the movies, we see how police who care prevent people such as Witness D from becoming victims of their own courage.

In a normal society, someone like Witness D would at least be monitored, even if not given full-time personal security to ensure he did not place his own life — and that of his family — at risk. Where individuals take decisions that make them vulnerable, police crime intelligence or the State Security Agency should step in, offering protection witnesses may not realise they need.

What is stomach-turning — if not nauseating — is that in the last few days of his life he knew his days were numbered, and said as much to anti-crime activist Yusuf Abramjee, according to an eNCA broadcast. In other words, he was afraid for his life. His wife and family told the Sunday Times he felt he had done his part and was awaiting his killing. And the state allowed him to wait alone, vulnerable? The state left him to rely on his own security firm? Do they not say in medicine that a doctor cannot heal himself?

It makes absolutely no sense for our police to insist that, because he had a security firm, he would protect himself. That line of reasoning proves that our security chiefs were sleeping on the job. The briefing by national police commissioner Fannie Masemola to justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga on Saturday was too little, too late.

Madlanga — if not previously offered one — should have requested a briefing on all witnesses and staff members long before, to satisfy himself that his commission was not used as a platform that marks people to be killed. More so given earlier speculation about police crime intelligence chief Dumisani Khumalo suddenly falling ill upon arriving at the commission — sparking poisoning rumours that have since been dismissed. If Madlanga did not request a briefing on witness and staff protection, he and his assistant commissioners dropped the ball. If they were offered a briefing that noted that Witness D had turned down protection, and Mandlanga accepted this, then he still dropped the ball.

But the big elephant in the room is Masemola and his compromised, incompetent deputies. The least said about Masemola the better, though. He seems already in retirement while still in office. It’s hard to imagine any other police commissioner so disinterested in his work at a time of such volatility.

Khumalo, too, is an intelligence chief seemingly too distracted by his court appearances — including his recent successful bid to relax his bail conditions — to properly focus on his duties. Khumalo may win in court, but we lose lives in the streets where his team should be ensuring security. Today it’s Van der Merwe; yesterday it was the City of Ekurhuleni’s head of corporate and forensic audits, Mpho Mafole, who led investigations into corruption in the heart of the beast that Ekurhuleni has become. Now he is dead. Remember Babita Deokaran, shot and killed for investigating corruption at Tembisa Hospital — also in Ekurhuleni. It’s a cesspit. It is sucking the lives out of good people while authorities sleep on the job.

The criminal justice cluster requires leadership. Honest witnesses deserve police managers and justice officials who take an interest in their safety and who think holistically about the dangers of testifying in the many commissions our president so readily establishes.

The tragic reality now is that the next time President Cyril Ramaphosa announces a new commission of inquiry, real witnesses will choose life and stay away. That’s precisely what criminals who currently run the police and other areas of government want — something they should never be allowed to achieve.

What follows Witness D’s cowardly killing will be eulogies about what a patriot he was, how courageous and selfless he was. While this is true, it’s not the only truth. The truth we won’t hear is how those who failed Witness D will be held accountable. Where were the country’s intelligence officers? They’re busy spying on politicians and journalists instead of doing what they’re employed to do.

Worse still, the crooks who killed the hero that Witness D was will try to bribe lowly paid investigators to get away with murder — literally. Tragic, this.