GOOD Statement by Brett Herron, Unite for Change Leadership Council Member and GOOD Secretary-General:
The country’s top police generals have made extraordinary allegations of impropriety against each other over the past six months since KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi called a press conference where he accused suspended-Police Minister Senzo Mchunu of an inappropriate relationship with a member of a crime cartel.
Parallel televised inquiries by the Madlanga Commission and a Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee have exposed the police as shot through with factionalism, alleged corruption, and rank incompetence.
We’ve had Mchunu placed on gardening leave, Crime Intelligence Chief Dumisani Khumalo returned to work after being cleared of charges of fraud and corruption and learned how entrepreneur and alleged crime boss Cat Matlala appeared to have successfully cultivated relationships with generals and Ministers of Police. It is for Judge Madlanga and his team to determine whether the Ministers were naïve, negligent, and/or wilfully corrupt.
While the generals have lined up to lob grenades at each other, the commission hasn’t heard from the suspended Inspector-General of Intelligence Imtiaz Fazel, who claims to have information crucial to determining some of the generals’ integrity. The information is contained in a report he drew up on the allegedly irregular purchase of fixed property by Crime Intelligence, details of which were published by News24 today.
According to Fazel, the purchase of the buildings contravened provisions of the Public Finance Management Act, Treasury regulations, and supply chain management protocols.
Among the bigger bombshells in his report, from a community safety perspective, is that the buildings were financed by reallocating large proportions of provincial crime intelligence capital asset budgets (funds used to acquire critical crime intelligence gathering equipment).
Communities are in turmoil, and children on the Cape Flats are paying daily with their lives. But top police brass decides to reallocate 75% of the money needed by the Western Cape to conduct intelligence work. Fazel’s report names National Commissioner Fanny Masemola and Crime Intelligence chief Khumalo as authors of the decision.
Fazel was suspended last October pending an investigation by Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence. The investigation is said to relate to his leaking information to the media.
The high level of crime in the country (including the steep murder rate in Cape Town) and relatively low conviction rate are a direct consequence of extreme police dysfunctionality.
The amount of energy that investigators spend investigating investigators who should be investigating crime is a great boon for criminals but no good for anybody else.
Functional crime intelligence is fundamental to crime prevention, particularly organized crime. Whoever decided to asset strip Western Cape Crime Intelligence at the very time organized crime was undergoing a massive evolution and resurgence on the Cape Flats did a criminal disservice to the people of the province.
The information in Fazel’s report is too important to the country to be considered in secret by a parliamentary committee. Fazel must be given a public platform to account. Information in his report considered confidential can be redacted prior to the report being submitted to the commission.
GOOD Manifesto on Public Safety: Prioritizing public safety and effective crime prevention strategies.
Bang Shift
Fun South African Fact: The Bloukrans Bridge, Western Cape, is the highest commercial natural bungee jump in the world.
Midnight Rider
Fun South African Fact: The oldest remains of modern humans were found in South Africa and are well over 160,000 years old.