JUSTICE MALALA: The blood-stained case against Mchunu

Sometimes the answers to our problems are right before us. The challenge is to recognise that the answers are there, and to act on them.

Over the past week we have all been exercised by the murder of Marius “Vlam” van der Merwe — the security expert who provided explosive testimony of murder and malfeasance in Ekurhuleni to the Madlanga inquiry — and the killing of 12 people in a shooting at a shebeen in Saulsville, Tshwane. Why do assassinations of whistleblowers persist? Why do killings such as the Saulsville massacre keep happening?

Nearly 2,000 people were killed in recorded hits in South Africa between 2000 and 2021, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime. A 108% increase in assassinations was recorded in South Africa over the past 10 years. Why are the perpetrators and masterminds of these outrageous murders never brought to justice?

The answers are staring us in the face. Last week, testifying before the Madlanga commission, Senzo Mchunu, the minister of police now on special leave, gave us a glimpse of why crime is rampant — and usually goes unpunished. Mchunu opened a window to a world in which one man can arbitrarily make decisions that can have a huge impact on crime-fighting and, as a result, the country’s ability to attract or keep investment and jobs.

At the heart of the Madlanga inquiry is this simple question: was Mchunu influenced by criminals of some or other type to disband the national political killings task team (PKTT), a squad established to deal with the problem of political killings in KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere?

At the heart of the Madlanga inquiry is this simple question: was Mchunu influenced by criminals of some or other type to disband the national political killings task team?

This team was not established frivolously. It was born out of the Moerane commission that was established by the then KZN premier Willies Mchunu in 2016 to investigate what lay behind the rampant political killings in the province. Fierce competition for power, state resources and tenders had led to widespread violence, particularly between rival ANC factions.

That problem has not gone away. Political assassinations always spike ahead of local government elections, with about 30 cases in both 2016 and 2021. We should expect the same pattern as next year’s elections approach. KZN has been the epicentre of these political killings, with about 488 assassinations since 2000, including 54 councillors and 103 municipal workers.

You would expect that the disbandment of a body tasked with addressing this problem would be undertaken with care. But no.

In his testimony to the Madlanga inquiry, Mchunu revealed that he attended a funeral with national police commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola on December 28 2024. Three days later, Mchunu wrote a letter directing Masemola to disband the PKTT. Yet he did not even mention this when he met Masemola at the funeral.

What kind of decision-making is this, where a national asset is tossed aside with no discussion or consultation at all?

The commissioners asked Mchunu when the idea of disbanding the PKTT first occurred to him. He answered that it came to him on “29, 30 and 31 December 2024” when he was no longer “working up and down” the country but simply sitting at his rural home in KZN.

Mchunu conceded to the commissioners that he had not disbanded any other task team and had not done a cost comparison between the PKTT and other police task teams to justify its disbandment.

The heartbreaking reality is that we are here because of poor political leadership. The PKTT is the body that was supposed to solve killings such as those of Ekurhuleni municipal auditor Mpho Mafole, murdered on a highway because he had stopped a dodgy R1.8bn tender, and Babita Deokaran, the Tembisa Hospital corruption whistleblower. Mchunu unilaterally, cruelly shut it down without consulting a single police leader, authority or staff member.

He should not be suspended. He should be fired and investigated.

The continued killings of whistleblowers and political actors will decrease South Africa’s ability to attract investment. It needs to be stopped urgently. But that won’t happen until we recognise that we have absolutely the wrong people in office.