Acting police minister Firoz Cachalia was within his rights to ask national police commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola why he was returning dockets to the political killings task team, a team which had been officially disbanded by suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu.
This is according to police and violence monitor Mary de Haas, who said Masemola was disobeying the acting police minister by returning the dockets.
Last week, Masemola announced that 121 dockets that were removed from the KwaZulu-Natal political killings task team would be processed and sent back to the province for the team to continue with its investigations.
At a media briefing in July, KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi said the case dockets were removed from the task team and handed to the office of the deputy commissioner for crime detection, Lt-Gen Shadrack Sibiya.
After Masemola's announcement, Cachalia said the political killings task team is at the centre of the allegations made by Mkhwanazi and will be dealt with by the Madlanga commission appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa in July to investigate allegations of political interference in the criminal justice system.
Cachalia said it was a concern that steps were being taken in relation to this matter before the commission has had a chance to investigate the issues surrounding the task team.
De Haas said the task team was officially disbanded by Mchunu last year.
She said the team was set up at ministerial level in 2018 after the Moerane commission of inquiry to investigate the political killings in the country.
“Only the minister could disband it. The minister legally disbanded it in writing at the end of last year,” De Haas said.
The minister deals with policy and the national commissioner is supposed to obey policy directives including when the task team is suspended. I do not see why there is controversy because the minister is querying why he is sending dockets to a team that no longer exists
— Police and violence monitor Mary de Haas
De Haas said she was not sure who the dockets were returned to because the task team had officially ceased to exist.
“The minister deals with policy and the national commissioner is supposed to obey policy directives including when the task team is suspended. I do not see why there is controversy because the minister is querying why he is sending dockets to a team that no longer exists.”
She said if Masemola sent these dockets back to the task team, he should definitely be suspended because he has disobeyed legal instructions from the minister.
“It is the minister who sets policy. This was a policy decision when (the task team) was set up with an executive order. It was a legal order. It is the job of the minister to set the policy and to ensure the policy is implemented.
“If the national commissioner sent the dockets to the task team, he is in disobedience and should be charged.”
De Haas said if Masemola wanted dockets to go back to the task team, he should have run it by the minister.
The team was supposed to have been disbanded six months ago. Apparently the dockets have been gone through very thoroughly, she said.
“It turns out a lot of dockets have not even been touched for years. What I got from a credible police source is that the minister had told Masemola or whoever was questioning him about the disbandment that it was OK to leave the investigating officer if the case was in court until the court case was over. Otherwise, all members had to go back to where they came from.”
De Haas said many people who had been deployed to the task team were from other parts of the province and should have gone back months ago.
“Can you imagine what this is costing us? There was an article months ago that the deputy national police commissioner for finance had warned Masemola last year that we could not afford to keep the task team. They cost us a fortune.
“They stay in expensive hotels, they hire cars. They have extra allowances for deployment, and they are running around with the National Intervention Unit, which is completely unheard of, costing us a huge amount of money.”
She said the NIU should be dealing with construction mafias and land invaders, or border control where cars are being shipped across to neighbouring countries.
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