SAPS chief’s political bombshell
April 20 2012 at 09:00am
By Deon de Lange
By Deon de Lange
Acting police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi dropped a bombshell in Parliament yesterday when he told MPs that “powers beyond us” had been telling him who he may or may not investigate – suggesting illegal political interference in investigative decisions.
Answering an unrelated question about poor conviction rates, Mkhwanazi said: “We have been told in many instances of late that we don’t have the right to investigate certain case dockets.”
He went on to claim that he had been instructed by “powers beyond us” to “release some case dockets to the inspector-general for intelligence”, in what seems to have been a thinly masked reference to criminal investigations against Crime Intelligence Division (CID) boss Richard Mdluli.
Mkhwanazi did not say who had given him these instructions, and The Star could not get clarification on his comments.
Mdluli stands accused – in an internal police investigation report – of plundering the CID’s secret service account to buy cars, houses and holidays and to illegally employ dozens of his family members as so-called “covert agents”.
The controversial general also faced murder charges last year relating to the unexplained death in 1999 of Oupa Ramogibe, the husband of Mdluli’s then girlfriend.
Speaking after yesterday’s meeting, DA police spokeswoman Dianne Kohler Barnard said the acting commissioner “does not appear to understand the full implications of his revelations today”.
“He has admitted openly what we have always assumed to be the case – that there is political interference in the SAPS. Remember, the Scorpions investigated too many ANC members and were consequently shut down. (Mkhwanazi) has today confirmed that SAPS members have received instructions not to investigate certain matters,” she added.
Mkhwanazi’s apparent slip of the tongue came after three days of increasingly hostile questioning by members of Parliament’s police committee during hearings into the police’s strategic plan for the year ahead.
Police corruption – the elephant in the room during the three days of hearings – also came to a head yesterday.
Annelize van Wyk (ANC) led the charge, noting that the cops had incurred irregular expenditure to the tune of R75 million last year – and spent a whopping R150m on “entertainment”.
She was followed by Kohler Barnard, who complained about the tendency for police officers caught with their fingers in the till to be placed on early retirement – with golden parachutes.
Velaphi Ndlovu (IFP) wanted to know from the top brass which senior officers had, in recent times, been arrested and jailed for graft, but he was met with stony-faced silence.
