Dear Editor
With Major-General Philani Lushaba and three of his colleagues now in the SAPS custody, the Democratic Alliance is calling on the Minister of Police to waste no time and initiate a full-scale clean-up of Crime Intelligence (CI). Enough tiptoeing around. CI needs a root-and-branch overhaul to restore integrity to one of South Africa’s most compromised security institutions.
Lushaba’s fall from grace is more scandalous than shocking. This is, after all, Crime Intelligence – a unit that seems to operate more like a soap opera than a state security division.
Last week, just as the National Prosecuting Authority tried to haul him in for questioning, reportedly over a R45 million property scandal involving purchases of a boutique hotel and commercial property in Pretoria North and Berea, Durban – allegedly approved without consulting the Minister of Public Works – Lushaba conveniently vanished.
But that was just the opening act. Fast forward to this morning, and the Major-General has turned himself in, alongside three colleagues, over a 2022 burglary he reported. His official laptop, cellphone, and firearm were stolen, and he claimed to have been away. What had he seemingly neglected to include in his statement? That the alleged burglar was a sex worker. Even worse, it’s now claimed that senior officers helped him cover it all up.
Let’s recap: a top cop allegedly robbed by a sex worker, property deals worth tens of millions signed off without oversight, an apparent internal cover-up, and a vanishing act right before the law came knocking. This isn’t just a case of bad apples, it’s the whole orchard of senior management.
All of this happened during the year-long hiatus of the JSCI which left the CI with zero oversight mechanism. Two months before the JSCI was finally constituted the DA wrote to the Inspector General of Intelligence quoting reports of the spending spree by CI and asking for a full investigation.
After years of unchecked rot, SAPS Crime Intelligence must be put under urgent ethical quarantine. The public cannot be expected to trust a security agency where scandals stack higher than case files. The DA demands decisive action, not spin, not delay, and certainly not more silence.
Regards
Dianne Kohler Barnard MP
DA Spokesperson on State Security