‘It’s a decision I took and I stand by it’: Mchunu defends PKTT disbandment directive

Suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu has defended his directive to disband the political killings task team (PKTT).

On December 31, Mchunu sent national police commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola a letter to “immediately” disestablish the task team and send a preliminary report by January 20, followed by a final and closing report later in the month.

He faced criticism over the letter, with many condemning his approach as the directive didn’t fall under his mandate and that he didn’t consult Masemola, which raised concerns about interference.

Testifying before parliament’s ad hoc committee investigating allegations of corruption in the criminal justice system made by KZN police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, Mchunu maintained he was well within his rights as a minister to issue the directive.

“It’s a decision I took, and I’m responsible for it, and I stand by it,” he said.

“I believe very strongly that the constitution allows the minister to take the decision I took. It was a lawful decision.”

He justified his reason for not informing Masemola by saying, “When President Cyril Ramaphosa decided to intervene in KZN, he did not call Masemola, Gen Mkhwanazi or Gen Khumalo to talk to them.”

The PKTT was established by Ramaphosa in 2018 to investigate politically motivated killings in KZN, which later expanded to other provinces.

Mchunu explained that part of the reason for disbanding the task team was due to the need for optimisation to get more resources to combat other crimes in the country instead of only focusing on political killings “in one corner of the country”.

“When you’re given a job as a minister, you have to run the country, not KZN. You can’t deal with crime with one temporary task team based in KZN, no matter how many times you go on TV.

“You may feel good about the PKTT, but you can’t keep relegating the majority of people in South Africa and focus on councillors, not that they must die.”

He said the PKTT was never meant to be permanent. “It was even referred to as a project. That tells you it would have a start and end date.”

He added that budget constraints were another reason to discontinue funding for the unit.

“Throughout our discussions with SAPS management from when we arrived, there was always a focus and emphasis on the decreased budget within SAPS. You’d ask, ‘Why don’t you do this?’ They would say, ‘There’s no money.’ This was lingering in my mind to say, where can we make better use of resources in SAPS in terms of budget?

“The budget allocated to SAPS became one of the reasons I wrote to the SAPS to give effect to more optimisation of our resources.”

He highlighted that political killings in the country are small compared with other crimes, citing that 35% of murders in South Africa are due to organised crime, 34% due to taxi violence, 24% due to political killings and 7% due to personal reasons.

“When you allocate resources, where do you allocate? When you say the PKTT task team deals with all the murders in the country, you’re lying, no matter how you look at it. It’s not reality, even if they clap their hands for you.

“If you’re the police minister, you’re meant to preside over R120bn. You have to think about the most effective way of distributing and using resources.”

Mchunu said they formed a new division in the organisation called operations response services to help respond to crime, including political killings. He said Masemola signed it, and it’s only left with funding to be implemented.

“The structure we have designed should be able to enable us to develop capacity to face challenges that are out there requiring responses from the police.”

On July 6, Mkhwanazi alleged that Mchunu’s decision to disband the task team was to protect criminal syndicates.

“I have nothing to do with criminal syndicates, and it will never happen,” Mchunu said.

“Mkhwanazi knows in his conscience that I’m not a criminal, and I have nothing to do with criminal syndicates.”

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