KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi believes the letter to disband the political killings task team (PKTT), signed by police minister Senzo Mchunu, was not written by the minister.
The PKTT was established in 2018 to investigate politically motivated killings, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal. It was disestablished in December 2024 by Mchunu in a letter sent to national police commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola.
Mkhwanazi made his second appearance before parliament’s ad hoc committee investigating allegations of corruption in the criminal justice system on Wednesday.
In his testimony, he alleged Mchunu was made to sign the letter but did not write it.
“I believe what is contained in this letter is not the minister’s words,” Mkhwanazi said. “The minister didn’t draft this thing; someone wrote it and made Mchunu sign it. If the minister were honest, he would say someone made him sign it.
“As much as the minister has to take ownership of the letter because his signature is there, I don’t think he’s the author. If he were, the question would be why he didn’t feel it was important to sit down with the national commissioner to discuss this. How can you make such a drastic decision without consulting him?”
He said minor mistakes in the letter, such as the wrong date of the implementation of the PKTT, made him believe it was not written by Mchunu. The letter states the task team was established in 2019 instead of 2018.
“If you look at what that paragraph says, ‘in 2019’, that’s a wrong thing to start with. The person was clearly misinformed.”
He added that when he approached Mchunu’s chief of staff Cedrick Nkabinde to ask about the letter, he was told it had been going back and forth, which made him believe the letter was coming from wherever it was drafted and given to Mchunu for his signature.
“These are part of the things I wanted to address with the minister had he given me an opportunity to meet him, but he felt I was less important to be listened to.”
According to Maj-Gen Petronella van Rooyen of the SAPS legal division, Mchunu did not have a legal mandate to order the disbandment of the task team.
“The question is: was it a lawful instruction or direction? Did the minister have the power to direct or command the closure of the task team investigating crimes? In my view, it did not have that authority, because it relates to the operations investigating cases and the operations of the police,” Van Rooyen said.
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