Testifying before an ad hoc parliamentary committee investigating allegations of political interference in the work of the police this week, General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi said he was surprised to learn that the now-suspended Minister of Police, Senzo Mchunu, had signed a letter disbanding the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT). This parliamentary inquiry is separate from the Madlanga Commission, which is examining the same allegations.

The letter reportedly instructed the PKTT to immediately cease its activities, which would have effectively halted its investigations. The unit had been probing a series of high-level political assassinations in South Africa and was believed to have uncovered evidence of large-scale corruption in Gauteng implicating senior political figures.

Mkhwanazi told the committee that after learning of the letter, he contacted the minister’s chief of staff, who confirmed that Mchunu had indeed signed it. He said their conversation led him to believe that the minister had been pressured by third parties, as the chief of staff indicated that several drafts of the letter had been exchanged between the minister and external actors.

According to Mkhwanazi: “someone else was behind this letter, and [the chief of staff] had to send it to the minister for signature.”

Concerned

Mkhwanazi said he was concerned that the minister had been poorly advised, that he might be held personally liable for the decision, and that he could even face prosecution for obstructing ongoing police investigations. Mkhwanazi told the committee that he requested a meeting with the minister to raise these concerns but that the meeting never took place, as the minister did not respond positively to his requests.

The general further testified that after his engagement with the chief of staff, details of their discussion appeared on social media, accompanied by claims that he had threatened the minister. The chief of staff later told him that he believed his phone had been tapped. Mkhwanazi said this led him to suspect the chief of staff of acting improperly, and he later learned that the official: “had been instructed to record me.” He told the committee that this was how their conversation ended up circulating online, distorted to suggest that he had threatened the minister.

Mkhwanazi also testified that the same chief of staff had previously told him that a businessman, Brown Mogotsi was very close to the minister. Mogotsi has been linked to alleged criminal activities and is reportedly associated with another businessman, Vusimuzi “Cat” Matala.

Matala has in turn been implicated in a R2 billion corruption scandal at Tembisa Hospital in Gauteng. Civil servant Babita Deokaran was assassinated in 2021 after blowing the whistle on corruption within the hospital. While the hitmen who killed her have been caught and jailed, the identities of those who instructed them remain unknown.

The Political Stakes

Analysts believe that identifying the people who gave the order to kill Deokaran may expose a corruption network that would implicate some of the country’s most senior political leaders.

Mkhwanazi testified to both the Madlanga Commission and the parliamentary inquiry that the PKTT was shut down primarily to stop what were believed to be its investigations into corruption in Gauteng. However, he told MPs that the PKTT had not been investigating that corruption and that those probes were instead being conducted by another police intelligence unit led by General Dumisani Khumalo, head of the police’s crime intelligence division.

Khumalo was recently arrested on what Mkhwanazi described as trumped-up fraud charges by the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC). Mkhwanazi alleged that the IDAC, which is a unit of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), had been infiltrated by criminal networks and that corruption within the NPA itself therefore extended to close to the top of that organisation.

Khumalo’s arrest, as with the shutdown of the PKTT, formed part of an effort to halt investigations into Gauteng corruption. Those investigations might have led to identifying the people who had ordered the Deokaran hit. That would in turn have triggered a political earthquake inside the African National Congress and brought down some of the most senior political leaders in the country.