A HIGHLY respected police officer has shaken South Africa’s government – and won the admiration of many ordinary people – with his explosive allegations that organised crime groups have penetrated the upper echelons of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration.
Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi did it in dramatic style – dressed in military-like uniform and surrounded by masked police officers with automatic weapons, he called a press conference to accuse Police Minister Senzo Mchunu of having ties to criminal gangs.
He also said his boss had closed down an elite unit investigating political murders after it uncovered a drug cartel with tentacles in the business sector, prison department, prosecution service and judiciary.
“We are on combat mode, I am taking on the criminals directly,” he declared, in an address broadcast live on national TV earlier this month.
South Africans have long been concerned about organised crime, which, leading crime expert Dr Johan Burger pointed out, was at a “very serious level”.
One of the most notorious cases was that of South Africa’s longest-serving police chief, Jackie Selebi, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2010 after being convicted of taking bribes from an Italian drug lord, Glen Agliotti, in exchange for turning a blind eye to his criminal activity.
But Gen Mkhwanazi’s intervention was unprecedented – the first time that a police officer had publicly accused a cabinet member, let alone the one in charge of policing, of having links to criminal gangs.
The reaction was instantaneous. Mchunu dismissed the allegations as “wild and baseless” and said he “stood ready to respond to the accusations”, but the public rallied around Gen Mkhwanazi – the police commissioner in KwaZulu-Natal – despite the province also being Mchunu’s political turf.
#HandsoffNhlanhlaMkhwanazi topped the trends list on X, in a warning shot to the government not to touch the 52-year-old officer.
“He’s [seen as] a no-nonsense person who takes the bull by the horn,” Calvin Rafadi, a crime expert based at South Africa’s University of Johannesburg, told the BBC.
