Chief of staff in the police ministry, Cedrick Nkabinde, has explained the close relationship he has with KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi and how he got to know suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu before being appointed to his office last year.
Nkabinde is testifying before parliament’s ad hoc committee investigating allegations of corruption in the criminal justice system made by Mkhwanazi, where Mchunu is implicated.
He told the committee he met Mchunu in 2017 while working for the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) investigating the murder of Mchunu’s security personnel member Xolani Nkosi, when Mchunu was still KZN premier. Mchunu went to Ipid, complaining about the progress of the case, which he was later assigned to.
Nkabinde said he then went to meet Mchunu in KZN regarding the case, where he was accompanied by former Ipid head Robert McBride. That’s when he was formally introduced to Mchunu, exchanged numbers and has kept in contact since then.
Evidence leader Norman Arendse asked Nkabinde why he kept in contact with Mchunu even after concluding the case. Nkabinde said that while they didn’t communicate regularly, he saw having Mchunu’s number as an advantage to have the contact number of a high-ranking official.
“He was a premier and I had direct contact with him,” Nkabinde said. “He’s a person I looked up to as a high-profile figure in government. You’d only see these people on TV. I kept in contact so that now I know the premier — for status.”
I go to his house, he comes to my house and we eat from the same plate. There are things only he and I will go to the grave knowing. Things he never mentioned during the media briefing and when he testified. We are close
He said they never discussed matters of his work at Ipid, adding that even when he resigned from Ipid in 2018, he never told Mchunu. “We were talking about general things. The nature of this person [Mchunu] is that he talks very little. You’d hardly interact with him. He’s a person of few words.”
Nkabinde told the committee about a “boys trip” he had with Mkhwanazi to Empangeni in KZN, where they visited Mchunu along the way. “At one stage I was in KZN and as I passed Empangeni, I remembered there was someone I knew here, and Mchunu welcomed me. I passed by and greeted him. He was out of government. There was nothing we could relate except that I was the one who thought it fit to keep this contact with a person I hold in high regard.”
Asked about the “boys’ trip” with Mkhwanazi, Nkabinde said he couldn’t reveal many details about the trip, emphasising the closeness of the relationship he had with Mkhwanazi. “Things I did with Mkhwanazi were personal. I don’t want to divulge much because we are both married.”
Nkabinde divulged further into his close relationship with Mkhwanazi, telling the committee about the time when Mkhwanazi helped him find a job when he was unemployed, reflecting on a time he flew down to KZN to support Mkhwanazi through grief when there was a death in his family. He added he even helped Mkhwanazi design a house he wanted to build.
“I go to his house, he comes to my house and we eat from the same plate. There are things only he and I will go to the grave knowing. Things he never mentioned during the media briefing and when he testified. We are close.”
He said his relationship with Mchunu was never as close as his relationship with Mkhwanazi.
TimesLIVE
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