Month: February 2022

Under the firm guiding hand of Police Minister and disgraced former national commissioner Cele, the SAPS has been increasingly following in the same brutal, corrupt footsteps as its apartheid predecessor. As then, it does not hesitate to turn on its own. In the early 1990s, security policeman Jikazi was murdered before he could expose his white colleagues who were stealing petrol from police stores.  The corruption appetites of the new power elite have grown with the eating. it is the very many SAPS members who take their oaths of office to report any suspected wrongdoing to management, regardless of who the wrongdoer is, seriously,  that are in the firing line.  In the Free State, Senior Administrator Patricia Mashale, is at the front of this line.  The usual weapon is dismissal using an unfair labour practice, expeditious disciplinary actions, but the way in which Ms Mashale has been targeted by her own colleagues during the past few months points to her own life, and possibly the lives of family members, being in danger.  She has now heard there are plans to arrest her on a trumped-up charge of perjury and remove her to somewhere far away from her home without registering details on the police system.   She fears that they want to make her ‘disappear’.

As a very senior and experienced Administer in a unit dedicated to priority crimes, Ms Mashale has, true to her oath of office as a police member, dutifully reported corruption, including irregular appointments and promotions, and firearms-related criminality, to her line managers or the Hawks.  The current wave of persecution started after she sent a dossier on corruption in disciplinary hearings, and how they were being used to settle scores, to National Commissioner Sitole in January 2021.  It was never acted on, but details were leaked to his former Free State colleagues. Initially a charge of misconduct for reporting to Sitole was opened, but it was not pursued. Then a case of harassment was opened against her in the Family Court by one of those she had named in the dossier, and her personal cellphone was illegally seized by police members. Months later it has not been returned to her, despite the illegality of the seizure having been drawn to the attention of the National Head of Legal Services, with the request that it be returned, six weeks ago.  She is also under surveillance. On 21 November the car she normally drives to collect her son from a boarding school a long distance away, which was driven by another family member, qA followed all the way home by police in unmarked vehicles who, on finding that she was not in the car, lost interest.  Severely traumatised, she sought professional assistance and, when she handed in her medical certificate, was instructed to ask her therapist to put the diagnosis ‘depression’ on it (he refused to commit fraud. In January she was informed that she would have to attend an Expeditious Disciplinary Hearing, to be chaired by one of the members whose irregular promotion she had reported, leading to its reversal. 

The Free State Provincial Commissioner who authorized the disciplinary hearing is .Lt-General Motswenyane.  Serious questions arise about her appointment as her five year contract had ended in February 2021, and appears to have been irregularly extended.  She had previously been Provincial Commissioner in the North-West Province and is alleged to have outstanding cases against her there.  It was as Commissioner in that province that she achieved notoriety as Second Respondent in an Interdict Application brought by then IPID head Robert McBride in 2017 to stop the police under her command from obstructing IPID investigations into then Acting National Commissioner Phahlane for crimes including money laundering and corruption, for which Phahlane is now on trial.  She herself was under IPID investigation for establishing a team (headed by a notorious torturer) specifically to interfere with the investigations, making it impossible for IPID to finalise them at that time (the chief investigator has since been murdered).  She stands accused of taking no action against serious allegations of sexual harassment made by female members, including station commissioners, against a District Commissioner, who also stands accused of blatant racial discrimination against ‘coloured’ and white members.

The Human Rights Commission CEO confirmed to the SAPS that Mashale had fulfilled the requirements of making a Protected Disclosure. Shortly thereafter his (the CEO’s contract) was not renewed. It is known that there is political interference, including in appointments, in the SAHRC. Two weeks ago she discovered that the personal phone she is now uses has been hacked.  She cannot access her emails, and her bank has informed her that her personal details have been leaked.

This latest development, the threat of an unprocedural arrest, is linked to the harassment case opened against her in 2021.  Having obtained a Protection Order herself against the management member, Mashale has challenged his action through a recission application. which, following several postponements, is set to be heard on 13 April.  She has been informed that the charge she now faces is one of perjury for submitting an affidavit to the Family Court stating that the Protection Order obtained against her had been set aside – which it has been pending her recission application to be heard, together with the management member’s matter, in April.

Ms Mashale  has been giving her support to hundreds of SAPS members who have been persecuted by corrupt, incompetent management, many of whom have been illegally dismissed. Advocate Malesela Teffo, from whom she and others receive legal assistance (https://mg.co.za/opinion/2022-02-21-advocate-dan-teffos-life-may-now-be-at-greater-risk-than-ever) has won many cases to reinstate illegally dismissed workers and the police refuse to reinstate them, even after they have won arbitration awards and, in some cases, obtained Labour Court Orders. They have now discovered that despite supposedly having been dismissed, these members have never received dismissal letters signed by the National Commissioner, and their details are still reflected on the SAPS administrative systems.  Their contributions to the Government Employees Pension Fund and SARS continue, but they are not receiving their salaries.  Who is pocketing their salaries?  They have attempted to open fraud and corruption charges against SAPS management but have allegedly been told to change their statements before cases are registered.  At least one other affected member has been threatened with malicious, and serious, criminal charges.

Like Advocate Teffo, Ms Mashale has been drawing the attention of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee and the Presidency to these abuses for years but no action whatsoever has been taken against the man who is responsible for allowing criminality to flourish in the police, Minister Cele.  National Commissioner Sitole has become a scapegoat, but the rot is far more widespread.  Until there is a forensic audit of all management members and their qualifications, nothing will change. The removal of Sitole must also be accompanied by a forensic investigation of Free State management, and all allegations of illegal conduct.  Unless these steps are taken, immediately, the insatiable corruption appetites will continue to flourish, many competent and experienced members will be lost to the SAPS, and violent crime will continue its destructive path. 

Ms Mashale fears that the criminal SAPS tactics used in the arrest of Advocate Teffo by apartheid era police members, leading to his detention in prison for ten days without having appeared in court, will be used against her, probably with lethal consequences as the annual death toll in police custody is high.  Why, despite its supposed support for the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and Whistle-blowers, and its anti-corruption rhetoric, have all of those who could have acted to protect her and prosecute wrong doers not done so?   Her persecution, and the threat she is now facing, must lead to immediate action at the highest levels of government to ensure her protection, while simultaneously initiating concerted action to root out the endemic criminality which festers at all levels of the SAPS and poses a threat to the lives of all South Africans.

It is common knowledge that prominent whistle-blower and relentless corruption fighter Thabiso Zulu remains under threat of death because Minister of Police Cele. has refused to provide him with the protection instructed by the Public Protector, and he has even overruled a personal undertaking by President Ramaphosa to do so.  Cele also, completely irregularly, oversees the work of an inter-ministerial task team on political killings in KZN, headed by a non-detective SAPS member, which appears to have no legal status in terms of the SAPS Act.  This team operates opaquely, apparently helping itself to dockets which are not necessarily politically- linked.  Despite its regular blasts of hot air about a few selected cases, it has achieved little in the past three and a half years.  One of the cases it has been investigating is that of the October 2019 attempted murder of Thabiso Zulu, in which it has allegedly, willfully, ignored crucial evidence provided to it, while acting unlawfully against Zulu in illegally seizing his phones in October 2021. However, it is this team’s handling of the murder in 2017 of Zulu’s close friend, Sindiso Magaqa that is now placing Zulu’s life in great danger, following the release on bail on 16 February of three alleged, very dangerous hitmen, by the Ixopo Court, despite the seriousness of their crime.

The Sindiso Magaqa case

Sindiso Magaqa, a former ANC Youth League leader and corruption-fighting councilor, together with two other Umzimkhulu councillors, were shot and injured in the area in July 2017.  Magaqa subsequently died in hospital. With survivors providing information about the attack, including about the vehicles which had been used, progress in investigations was being made by a credible detective. After its establishment, in mid-2018, the task team took over the docket and, in March 2019, five men were arrested, with charges against two of them (one a senior politician and prime suspect) almost immediately dropped.  Three of the alleged hit men, for whom bail had been refused until 16 February, remained in prison. Their accomplice, Jabulani Mdunge, accused of firing the shots, had been shot dead before the arrests.

That this attack was well planned was confirmed by media reports six months ago about the existence of a counter-intelligence report describing how apartheid-era security police members in Crime Intelligence in KZN used slush funds to run a political hit squad that killed Magaqa, (and also engage in torching trucks) They are alleged to have killed Jabulani Mdunge, fearing he would talk. Completely irregularly, the report on these activities had apparently been handed by then national head of intelligence, General Jacobs, to his MK colleague Minister Cele, in 2019. Jacobs should have handed it to the national commissioner, his line manager.  Instead of taking any action, Cele had suppressed the report, which appears to have been classified. The existence of the report has been independently confirmed, and the identities of three former security branch members are known.  One of them was named by the TRC as one of the handlers of Richmond warlord Sifiso Nkabinde, whose expulsion from the ANC led to violent conflagration in Richmond, and many deaths – including of Nkabinde himself – in the latter 1990s. 

Sifiso Nkabinde’s death was almost certainly linked to the likelihood that his bitterness at the way he was treated would have led to his exposing others who had co-operated with apartheid agents. What was clear at the time was that ANC leadership was determined to cover-up any evidence which pointed fingers at leaders. A small team led by a top provincial detective had made arrests in dozens of cases and it seems that panic had set in as that team was immediately withdrawn before the arrests could expose any prominent ANC representatives. A cover-up of evidence and sham trials followed. A key hit man who had been arrested was – against all warnings about what would almost certainly follow – released on bail. He was executed at the scene of a massacre following the assassination of Sifiso Nkabinde.  There are parallels between these events in Richmond and investigations into political killings twenty years later.  Thabiso knows which politicians want him dead (he has collected his own evidence and disseminated it widely).   The establishment of this inter-ministerial task team, as progress was being made in the Magaqa case, suggests that the lessons of Richmond had been learnt by the ANC – especially given the alleged role of apartheid security branch members in the Richmond and Umzimkhulu carnage.

Central to all these recent events is the Minister of Police, the very person constitutionally responsible for the safety and security of South Africans, who refuses Thabiso Zulu protection. He irregularly heads a ministerial investigative team (needing immediate disbandment), and is reported to have covered up for apartheid era security police who should surely have been charged for their role in the murder of Magaqa and the attempted murder of his two companions?  Two of those charged, and now released on bail, were members of Cele’s TRT,  the brutal ‘amaberets’ unit he established for no good reason while national commissioner, which members routinely kill and torture people.  Why, almost three years after these alleged hit men were arrested, and bail was successfully opposed –  for which sufficient evidence is needed – has bail now been given, and why has their trial not been proceeding.  Credible reports suggest these men were plotting against Zulu in prison and, now that they have been released, he is sure they are going to kill him.  Already severely traumatized by an attack which almost killed him in October 2019, and further police abuse in July 2020 and October 2021, he has even been told by an intelligence member that he will not live another week. If he is killed it will be at the hands of a complicit state. For months the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee has been provided with information about the inappropriateness of Cele’s involvement in operational matters, and about the suppression of the counter-intelligence report, yet no constructive remedial action has been taken. The buck stops with President Ramaphosa who not only appointed the disgraced former national commissioner Cele as his minister, but allows him to cancel his own undertaking to give Zulu protection, apparently giving him carte balance to continue to engage in grossly irregular interference in policing and cover up for alleged apartheid era policemen who are employed by the SAPS and funded by taxpayers.  If Thabiso Zulu is assassinated, his blood will be on ministerial and presidential hands.

Re: Richmond see ‘The Scorpions : A Frankenstein Monster?’ 2003 at www.violencemonitor.com