BARNEY MTHOMBOTHI | The criminal justice abyss is deep: how do we climb out of it now?

It would seem KwaZulu-Natal provincial police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi is, to borrow a saying beloved by hip social media types, giving certain people a lot of chest pains. He’s touched them on their studios.

When Mkhwanazi held that kamikaze media conference on a quiet Sunday morning dressed like he was about to overthrow the government, many found it hard to believe his allegations about a criminal justice system — senior police officers, prosecutors, judges and even the minister — that had been taken over by the criminal underworld. How could that be?

Mkhwanazi’s conduct itself almost seemed the sort of recklessness that bordered on stupidity. Grey heads must have nodded and chortled, convinced that it was a matter of time before this whippersnapper ended up with egg on his face. Or worse.

One also suspects that the government, as is its wont, would probably have preferred to let sleeping dogs lie — but the public outcry made that impossible.

To procrastinate or remain passive in the face of such damning allegations would have shaken the foundations of a nascent GNU still finding its feet, treading warily on what was still uncharted territory. Taking disciplinary action against Mkhwanazi was out of the question. He was walking on water.

They would have been the monkeys at the beck and call of the real organ grinders, the crooks and murderers who’d be calling the shots from the shadows

More than a year later, Mkhwanazi is not only still standing, he’s standing even taller and towering over the casualties all around him. In our recent history, no-one has had as profound an impact on society and politics as he has. He’s upset the apple cart. Heroes have become villains, darlings turned into dimwits.

He’s not only been vindicated, but everybody who’s tried to take him on or land a punch has been eviscerated. That’s what’s so remarkable about the Mkhwanazi juggernaut — that those who’ve had their guns trained on him have not only missed, but have been utterly decimated. And it’s quite an illustrious list of the vanquished. Police minister Senzo Mchunu suspended, his presidential ambitions in tatters. He’s still drawing his fat salary, but it’s a matter of time. He’s a dead man walking. Then there’s Shadrack Sibiya, the suspended deputy national police commissioner, who would have been the top cop under a future Mchunu gangster government, in court on rape charges.

Al Capone, the notorious US mobster, was never charged for the serious crimes such as murder and racketeering that he committed but was finally done for tax evasion. Sibiya too, it would seem, will likely be felled by the least-expected crimes.

The recently fired deputy chief of crime intelligence Feroz Khan, whose every pore oozes millions of dubious rand, completes the triumvirate that would have formed the nucleus of the mafia state. And Andrea Johnson, disgraced former head of Idac — aka “You gorgeous” — was to be the midwife helping to give birth to the plan. They nearly pulled it off — simply arrest all those standing in the way on trumped-up charges, including national police commissioner Fannie Masemola, crime intelligence head Dumisani Khumalo and Mkhwanazi himself. And anybody else who poses a threat.

The plan was not even original. It was the ruse perfected by Khan to protect the nefarious interests of tobacco smugglers. Although the trio would have been in nominal charge of the state, they would have been the monkeys at the beck and call of the real organ grinders, the crooks and murderers who’d be calling the shots from the shadows.

The million-dollar question is whether a government led by President Cyril Ramaphosa will have the courage to slay the beast.

The Mkhwanazi expose, which gave birth to the Madlanga commission, has stopped these evil machinations in their tracks. Even the bit players, the extras in this sorry soap opera, haven’t been spared. It turns out that Brown Mogotsi, the fixer who was supposed to smooth Mchunu’s path to the presidency, can hardly negotiate his way out of a paper bag. He can’t even find lawyers smart enough to bail him out of jail.

But it’s the seeming connivance of senior police officers that must be driving the public around the bend. Former head of the Hawks Godfrey Lebeya, who once turned up at a media conference wearing his doctoral regalia, was lyrical before the commission in describing events that happened more than 10 years ago, but suddenly clammed up or professed amnesia when asked about alleged iniquities by his members that happened only a few years ago. He obviously knows more than he’s letting on.

But there’s no more pathetic a case than that of Julius Mkhwanazi, the dismissed deputy head of the Ekurhuleni metropolitan police. He’s in a real pickle. Just how many blows can one man take? And there’s a cast of non-government characters whose hallucinations Mchunu seemed overly keen to listen to. They’ve all bitten the dust.

Although Mkhwanazi’s allegations, along with the dramatic way he presented them, were initially greeted with suspicion and scepticism, everything he said has largely proved to be true. And more. There are even calls for the Madlanga commission to be made permanent, because some believe what has been exposed so far is only the tip of the iceberg. And the million-dollar question is whether a government led by President Cyril Ramaphosa will have the courage to slay the beast.

Now Mkhwanazi’s foes, apparently incensed by his vindication, are saying he must never be allowed to win, as if this was some kind of contest. We surely can, and should, all agree that the bad guys should be put away. Anyone involved in wrongdoing should have the book thrown at them.

It’s therefore not about which side wins or loses. It’s about how this country finally gets out of the hole that Mkhwanazi has alerted us to.