There is a beautiful quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth that seems to capture the meaninglessness of the passion behind the support for Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi: “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
The point is that we all get passionate about what we believe in. We don’t let the facts get in the way of our passions.
Many people, disillusioned by crime, want a hero — now, not later. When Mkhwanazi, like a player on a Shakespearean stage, struts and frets, sharing his tale with passion, we go in headfirst. We will establish the facts later. We have found our hero. In our hunger and desperation we must always tread carefully and never be tempted to eat the seed. We must always examine what is said and what is left for the imagination.
On face value, Mkhwanazi seems courageous, taking on the minister of police, Senzo Mchunu, and a deputy national police commissioner, Shadrack Sibiya. But is he, in fact, courageous, or someone running scared of an impending arrest?
Let’s look at what Mkhwanazi said. He told the nation on Sunday he was concerned about a shadowy character named Brown Mogotsi’s seemingly unlimited access to police records, including an occurrence book, a crime intelligence presentation and a note to him saying: “There’s a plot to charge you.”
Then there was Mogotsi’s message to Mchunu: “I am also meeting with the DNC [deputy national commissioner] and the CoS [chief of staff] today in Durban for finalisation of [head of crime intelligence Dumisani] Khumalo and General Mkhwanazi’s matter.”
We already knew at this point that Khumalo was arrested in dramatic fashion by members of the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac), a prosecution-led unit within the National Prosecuting Authority, at OR Tambo International Airport on June 27. Surely, Mkhwanazi must have thought he was next. What, exactly, is his “matter”? What is Mogotsi referring to?
Exactly nine days after Khumalo’s arrest, Mkhwanazi tells us at the press conference: “We ask ourselves a question — is there a theory of conspiracy targeting senior officials involving the minister of police in this country?”
Mkhwanazi is throwing shade at Idac, which arrested his fellow senior cop Khumalo
At this point, Mkhwanazi’s anxieties are becoming clear. At the same presser, he talks about intelligence information relating to fraudulent vetting being leaked to a member of parliament who handed it to Mchunu, whose chief of staff then writes to Idac to investigate. Mkhwanazi then states: “Idac receives these dockets to investigate and Idac does exactly that. I wonder whether this is what Idac was established for.”
Now, this is not complex. Mkhwanazi is throwing shade at Idac, which arrested his fellow senior cop Khumalo. He wants us to split hairs about why Idac should not be investigating files received from Mchunu’s chief of staff through the MP. Mkhwanazi is running scared, ostensibly about what Idac might find about him. On the stage with a microphone in hand he acts brave but, in truth, he’s running scared of Idac, which is armed with an intelligence file from an MP about police corruption. We may not know the detail yet, but if Mkhwanazi did not do anything wrong he has no reason to fret.
Like the biblical Samson, though, he’s trying to bring the entire house down before Idac gets a chance to finalise its investigations. He knows that once Mchunu has handed the document to Idac, there’s nothing the police top brass can do. Idac is becoming the Scorpions of yesteryear. Police have no authority over them. The same way they arrested former commissioner Jackie Selebi, they can arrest current national police commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola or any of his generals, including Mkhwanazi, if there is evidence against them.
What makes Idac more potent is that it’s prosecution-led. When Khumalo, the police chief of crime intelligence, is caught by surprise, what lies ahead for Mkhwanazi who, in his words, doesn’t have a provincial head of intelligence because Mchunu froze the position?
If you add to this that Sibiya told the media this week that it was his team that arrested AKA's killers, not Mkhwanazi’s, it is becoming clear that the truth is already a casualty in this war. If you add, too, the fact that one of those arrested is linked to the Gcaba brothers and therefore to the Zuma family, it’s clear to me that this is a proxy war. The real handlers are behind the scenes. But it’s about to get rough for all involved.
Let me be clear. Where Idac has evidence of corruption or malfeasance against Mkhwanazi, Khumalo and all the top police chiefs, they must face the music without fear or favour. That’s what the law requires. No fear of riots 2.0 must hold the nation back from cleaning up the police force.
Further, where Mkhwanazi or anyone else has evidence of corruption against Mchunu, Sibiya and their acolytes, they should open cases and arrest them forthwith. Calling a press conference and whingeing about criminality in the police is not an act of courage. Taking a team to the police minister’s door and arresting him on the strength of evidence against him is courage and service to the nation.
We must interest ourselves in facts — not sycophantic support for anyone. What, for example, is contained in this intelligence file that Mkhwanazi is worried about? What are the facts about who arrested AKA’s killers? What are the implications for that case given the current imbroglio?
As a country, we should stop clapping hands, organising marches and declaring undying love for people like Mkhwanazi simply because they took the microphone, ascended a Shakespearean stage and, with sound and fury, told us a tale. That’s not enough. And there’s much more we don’t know, still.
If there is a case against both Sibiya and Mkhwanazi (and their funny boss Masemola), they all must be arrested. Those effecting the arrests would be the brave ones.
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