Our police crime intelligence is, in part, a force for good. It helps us resolve many complex crimes. It keeps us safe. But, equally, it is a den of crime and iniquity. A crime scene.
At the heart of the current storm involving senior police members at each other’s throats is not whether or not they’re compromised, it is how crime intelligence sucked them into this den. Crime intelligence boss Dumisani Khumalo is out on bail after a dramatic arrest by the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (Idac) at OR Tambo Airport. The inspector-general of intelligence (IGI), Imtiaz Fazel, has recommended prosecution of national police commissioner Fannie Masemola and crime intelligence CFO Philani Lushaba, who is on suspension.
KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi this week told MPs he would, if it were up to him, fire everyone at crime intelligence and reconstitute the police division. “As a matter of fact, honourable members,” he said, “some of the members of crime intelligence have benefitted from the leasing of houses. The same members who are feeding members of parliament with information [meant to be state secrets].”
The sorry saga relates to flagrant violations of the law on how properties are leased, if you believe the IGI and Idac. Or mere human resources violations that could be sorted by the human capital department, if you believe Mkhwanazi. But therein lies the bigger, corrosive damage done by crime intelligence. It is not merely what thieving has happened; it is how crime intelligence influences our understanding of reality and truth.
Mkhwanazi, using truth as a weapon to force MPs to stop leaking information, didn’t help. “The risk [of making unfounded claims against crime intelligence] is that the members will be forced to respond. And the only … way to respond is to speak the truth. And when they come with the truth, the majority of you will not be able to stomach it. This country is going to burn.”
Even after Mkhwanazi concluded his testimony, many questions remained unanswered. In relation to the leases in crime intelligence, many wondered how many properties are affected, leased for how much, for how long. Are they occupied by whistleblowers and people who need safe sanctuaries, or are they dens of debauchery?
At this point all the MPs listening to him, and the rest of us, were meant to be shaking in our boots, mortified by the idea of the devastating truth that only Mkhwanazi and a select few can stomach, the truth we must pray to him not to share. How dare we yearn for a premature, truth-propelled Armageddon?
Mkhwanazi then said there are the Richard Mdlulis of this world — meaning criminal wrecking balls that should instil fear in us — who are still listening to gadgets belonging “to all of you”.
Even after Mkhwanazi concluded his testimony, many questions remained unanswered. In relation to the leases in crime intelligence, many wondered how many properties are affected, leased for how much, for how long. Are they occupied by whistleblowers and people who need safe sanctuaries, or are they dens of debauchery? If we knew what was good for us, we wouldn’t even dare ask questions. The country, remember, is going to burn. Well, there you have it folks, our flavour of the moment sharing his idea of truth.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by the pen name, Mark Twain, once said “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”.
In this age of social media, bots and internet farms, the battle for what we must believe is waged at a terrifying speed and scale. Information is not merely ubiquitous, technology is helping to obscure, if not blow to smithereens, what is left of our grasp of the truth.
Whatever happened to the initial idea that the judiciary is captured? EFF leader Julius Malema, mollycoddling Mkhwanazi, asked where evidence of a captured judiciary was. He wanted to ensure he did not come across as antagonising the flavour of the moment. Even with that deference, the best we got from Mkhwanazi was that information about the captured judges was given to the commission in camera. We must plant a flag here and hope for a day when chief justice Mandisa Maya will report back that evidence was received and action taken against these wayward judges. For now, we all wait and hope.
Elsewhere, the South African National Editors Forum, which I serve as chair, has had to push back this week against Mkhwanazi who, not for the first time, made sweeping statements about “specific journalists” that he did not name. He called for a broad investigation by counterintelligence, before pulling a Hlaudi Motsoeneng from the woodwork.
While Motsoeneng “is not necessarily my favourite person”, Mkhwanazi said, his view that broadcasting violence encouraged copycat behavior “might not have been wrong”. Red flags. Thankfully, Motsoeneng’s ban was rejected by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), and later the high court, as censorship.
Mkhwanazi’s comments about the media raised concern. There should be no irrational fear of investigations. If you have done nothing wrong, you shouldn’t lose sleep. At the same time, those seeking to deflect attention from flagrant violations of the law must not be allowed to use investigations as a bogeyman against journalists.
Mkhwanazi will do all of us a favour when he not only names journalists, but provides evidence against each name. Better still, since he is not an oupa from Eldos, he must investigate his claims first and then arrest, prosecute and send away for years those found to be rogues. This way he will find a lot of support within and outside Sanef.
There is a lot at stake and, as South Africans, we must tread very carefully. The battles being fought by our compromised top cops are several and layered. The implications for our policing are dire. Our idea of the truth is, sadly, being pummelled from all directions as they seek to avoid accountability or secure the top position as Masemola bows out in disgrace.
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