A former Acting National Police Commissioner, General Mkhwanazi, recently told a parliamentary committee shocking details about how politics, greed, and secret agents have messed up the South African Police Service (SAPS).
Mkhwanazi, who calls himself a career policeman, started his career because he wanted to fight criminals and violence in his township, Ashtown. He joined specialized units like the Special Task Force (STF) because he wanted to be where the "action" was.
Police Discipline Fell Apart
Mkhwanazi explained that the discipline in the police service got worse when the police forces merged after 1994.
- Using the word "Comrade": He said that introducing the word "comrade" among police ranks, like a constable calling a captain "comrade," hurt the police's professional culture.
- Political Friends (Caders) Joining: He believes that "deployed caders"—people brought into SAPS who did not "grow up in the police" and sometimes claimed histories from exile—made policing standards worse.
- Political Conditioning: After a major political conference in 2007, police started showing political bias. For instance, members protecting a then-fired Deputy President (who later became President Zuma) were denied support, such as working air conditioning in hot vehicles, because commanders said, "that man is not a president".
- Generals Recruiting: He noted that police generals were even recruiting members for political parties like Cope right on police premises.
Secret Funds and the Guptas
Mkhwanazi noted that Crime Intelligence (CI) was ruined by leadership ("comrades") who didn't understand the internal system, allowing juniors driven by "greed" and business interests to manipulate them.
He pointed to a major money scandal in 2011 involving the Secret Service Account, which was so misused it became known as the "slash fund".
Mkhwanazi learned just how political things were when the Minister of Police told him to stop using big newspapers like the City Press and Sunday Times for advertising police jobs. Instead, the Minister told him to use the New Age newspaper. When Mkhwanazi asked who owned the New Age, he was told it belonged to the Guptas. This made him very uncomfortable, and he realized he was "in deep in the political space".
Being Fired for Doing the Right Thing
Mkhwanazi was appointed Acting National Commissioner by President Zuma in 2013.
He left the position quickly and "unceremoniously" because he was frustrated by the Minister’s political meddling. He cited one example where the Minister tried to stop disciplinary steps against a figure named Mlambo, who Mkhwanazi believed received his Crime Intelligence job as a "reward" rather than based on skill.
When the Minister told Mkhwanazi to drop cases, Mkhwanazi demanded the instruction be put in writing, which the Minister refused to do. Mkhwanazi was told that a lawyer from the NPA (Advocate Brea) was allegedly instructed to withdraw the criminal case against Mlambo.
Mkhwanazi personally told President Zuma in a one-on-one meeting that he was dealing with "illegal activity" and had issues with the Minister. Zuma did not investigate, instead simply saying he would appoint "someone else to take over".
Mkhwanazi believes he was punished for being disciplined and refusing to be part of what he called a "criminal syndicate". He was sent home for a year without a post, and state security counter-intelligence monitored him 24/7.
The Secret Movement of Killing Dockets
Mkhwanazi was running the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The President announced the plan for government intervention regarding political killings at a political rally, and the structure was later made official in Parliament.
Mkhwanazi was shocked when he learned that the PKTT’s dockets—121 of them—were suddenly moved to Pretoria without his knowledge.
General Kumalo, who was holding the center of the operation, gave the order to move the dockets. Kumalo said there was "just too much politics" and he was frustrated because the National Commissioner wasn't helping. Mkhwanazi felt the team members failed to tell him because they had become "numb to complain" after earlier problems, such as having their names removed from awards lists and facing instructions to reduce the size of the team.
Mkhwanazi registered a criminal complaint against the Minister regarding the letter that caused the chaos, listing him as a suspect. While the Minister signed the letter, Mkhwanazi wants investigators to find out who "crafted the letter" and gave the Minister "a gun to shoot and kill someone". He hopes the case regarding the letter will be heard in court by the end of December 2024.
The Rogue Agent Paulo Sullivan
Mkhwanazi urged Parliament to investigate a man named Mr. Paulo Sullivan, calling him a "rogue element" trying to destabilize SAPS and capture senior officers.
Mkhwanazi noted that Sullivan has citizenship in three countries and was very angry when he was removed from the main South African airport.
Mkhwanazi shared shocking information he received from the current Minister’s Chief of Staff (Gabindi), who told him that the former Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) operations were "planned, coordinated and executed at Paulo Sullivan's house".
The General is also concerned because Sullivan publicly claimed that the President gave him names of people to profile for the National Commissioner position and that he made recommendations on who was suitable. Mkhwanazi asked why no one has opened a case against Sullivan for crimes against the state, given his activities and his attempt to destabilize the security cluster.
High-Level Drug Syndicates
Mkhwanazi confirmed that major criminals, including Members of Parliament (MPs) and people in the judiciary (judges and magistrates), are involved in criminal syndicates, especially drug cartels.
He claimed that the evidence presented in camera (privately) to the Madlanga Commission contains "explosive things about judges".
He explained that police often use a strategy of arresting drug cartel leaders (like Matala and Mlambo, known as part of the "Big Five") for lesser crimes (like murder), to keep them locked up until the big drug case is ready. He confirmed that some murders of DJs were drug-related, often because one person stole another’s drugs.
Mkhwanazi gave an example of a planned theft in KZN involving drugs worth R200 million. The consignment was moved to an unguarded police office in Pepston, which lacked proper storage. During an alleged power outage (load shedding), criminals broke in, but only stole the drugs, leaving behind illegal firearms like an AK-47. Mkhwanazi concluded it was a "plan[ned] breakin" where people "came to collect what is theirs".
Regarding MPs, Mkhwanazi said many may get involved by mistake, taking campaign money from criminals without knowing the source. However, he added that there are "some of them few that deliberately are part of the problem".
Mkhwanazi suggested that SAPS should change its structure, moving away from being organized around the District Model and instead aligning with judicial structures (courts and NPA) to improve efficiency. He cautioned that this change should not be based on old tribal divisions, but on efficiency, referencing first-world countries.