Justice DG commandeers prison guards as security team

A top justice department official who was mugged while jogging outside his plush Pretoria golf estate is accused of taking three security guards from Pretoria’s Kgosi Mampuru prison as his personal bodyguards after the police rejected his request for close protection.

Four highly placed sources in the department told the Sunday Times that Doctor Mashabane, director-general of the department of justice & constitutional development, also took the guards with him on two recent trips abroad, including to Dubai, when he went there last month to restart extradition proceedings against the Gupta brothers.

However by phone late yesterday evening Mashabane strongly denied that the guards went with him on the international trips and said he could prove this. He also said there were not three guards assigned to him, but two.

Mashabane said that he needed close protection because he was at the helm of a department with a R5bn procurement budget and many lucrative contracts were at stake.

The officials told the Sunday Times the bodyguards are being paid an allowance and overtime. Documents the Sunday Times has obtained indicate the overtime claims range between R4,000 and R25,000 a month for one guard.

Earlier this month, the high court in Pretoria ordered that the former minister of social development, Bathabile Dlamini, her then spokesperson Lumka Oliphant and the former CEO of the South African Social Security Agency, Virginia Petersen, repay about R3.5m spent on their private bodyguards after they allegedly received threats from bogus grant recipients.

The details of what department staff said was Mashabane’s abuse of office was highlighted in a report by “concerned DOJ & CD employees” before parliament’s committee on justice & correctional services in May.

The report contains allegations relating to the bodyguards’ appointment, as well as further claims.

On Saturday night, Mashabane said there had been “a campaign against me for a year and a half aimed at distracting and intimidating me from fixing the challenges in the department.”

He said he was stabbed in the mugging incident he described as more sinister than just a street robbery.

Department spokesperson Steve Mahlangu dismissed the report by “faceless” officials as trying to advance “a hidden agenda by targeting and tainting the character and reputation of [Mashabane] with baseless and unfounded allegations that are not backed by any shred of evidence”.

The department offered the Sunday Times an interview with Mashabane, but later withdrew the invitation, saying he was on leave. On Saturday night Mashabane strongly denied this.

In a letter to justice minister Ronald Lamola dated May 17, portfolio committee chair Bulelani Magwanishe asked him to investigate the employees’ complaints.

“The committee requests that the minister establish the veracity of the allegations… [and] requests the minister to furnish it with a report on the outcome of the investigation on or before August 31.”

The committee also read that Mashabane, who was appointed by Lamola to “clean up the department”, had commandeered a lift in the department’s offices and had it fitted with fingerprint-identification that allows only himself and his bodyguards to use it. Last night, a spokesperson said he never uses the lift.

In the entire history of DOJ & CD or government, we don’t have any DG who has guards, except when a risk assessment has been conducted and report provided. Does the senior management service handbook allow for the DG to have three bodyguards and blue lights and what are the cost implications since the DG started utilising such services?

This week, the officials sent a follow-up letter to the MPs, saying Mashabane had applied to the police for personal protection in March 2021.

Sources told the Sunday Times that Mashabane’s application for bodyguards was lodged after he was mugged outside his posh golf estate in Centurion while jogging.

In their letter, the staff said it was “questionable as to why he requested close protection because his job does not impose any risk...DGs in other departments do not have bodyguards”.

In a letter to Mashabane dated April 7 2021, the then national police commissioner Gen Khehla Sitole informed him that crime intelligence had conducted an assessment and found that there was no “manifested, direct threat against [his] physical security”.

Sitole’s letter states that Mashabane had not been long in the job at the time, “and his efforts to address maladministration and corruption within the department might result in the manifestation of threats over time”.

However, the letter adds that because he heads a department “with large tenders and specifically security tenders”, he had an “elevated risk profile” and was “vulnerable to possible threats” because of his “routine activities as well as the fact that he will be travelling extensively to all other provinces”.

The report said the police would not provide Mashabane with protection because they were “limited to a certain category of individuals which does not include DGs of government departments and in the absence of an identified threat, the SAPS is not mandated to provide such services to [him]”.

Instead, Sitole advised Mashabane to implement basic measures at his home, by “installing an alarm system” which “should include outdoor sensors in front of windows that are not fully fitted with burglar bars”.

He also advised him to “avoid routine activities such as jogging or making use of the same routes when travelling to and from work”.

Mashabane then secured the services of the guards serving at Kgosi Mampuru prison, turning them into his own personal bodyguards.

On Saturday night Mashabane said SAPS had reassessed his security and he believes the risks he faces to have significantly increased.

According to a secondment agreement signed by Mashabane’s deputy, Thabitha Mametja, and then acting national commissioner of corrections Makgothi Thobakgale, the men — who had been earning R246,000 a year as security officers — would each get an annual raise of R15,000 as an acting allowance as “close protection officers”.

However, they appear to have been working so much overtime that Mashabane applied to Lamola to allow for a “deviation” from the law that bars employees’ overtime payments from rising above 30% of their monthly salaries.

One of the guards, whose name is known to the Sunday Times, earned almost R190,000 in overtime payments between September 2021 and June 7 this year.

VIP protection already costs taxpayers almost R2bn a year.

Approached for comment on Saturday, Lamola’s spokesperson Chrispin Phiri asked for copies of the documents Lamola signed and they were sent to him. He said the Sunday Times was wrongly in possession of sensitive information that could endanger Mashabane.

However, he said based on the threat assessment and his elevated risk profile, SAPS recommended that the department “provide him with a driver who has training and experience in VIP Protection”.

“The Correctional Services officials seconded to the department are giving effect to this recommendation,” he said.

In their complaint to the portfolio committee, the department staff were scathing of Mashabane saying: “In the entire history of DOJ & CD or government, we don’t have any DG who has guards, except when a risk assessment has been conducted and report provided. Does the senior management service handbook allow for the DG to have three bodyguards and blue lights and what are the cost implications since the DG started utilising such services?”

However, in an initial response sent to the Sunday Times two weeks ago, Mahlangu referred to the 2021 crime intelligence assessment. He said Mashabane “was not the first DG to have an assessment on his safety due to the nature of the mandate and responsibility of the department conducted and be provided with security assistance”.

“The DG of the department serves in a plethora of national security structures in the state due to the nature of his responsibility.”

Follow-up questions were sent to the department asking about the cost of the bodyguards’ international trips, salaries and overtime payments; whether they had received close protection training; and whether their responsibilities at Kgosi Mampuru were being covered by other employees. No responses were forthcoming.