EDITORIAL | Will Mkhwanazi’s allegations amount to anything?

Having a disciplined and long-serving member of the police force such as KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi levelling damning allegations against his political principal, police minister Senzo Mchunu, is a sign of the times.

On Sunday jaws were on the floor as Mkhwanazi went on national television in his special operational task force uniform and accused high-ranking police officers of allowing rot in the police force and capture by criminal syndicates.

He not only questioned why Mchunu disbanded the political killings task team in KZN but also implicated the national deputy police commissioner, Lt-Gen Shadrack Sibiya, whom he said had interfered with investigations and kept some dockets in his office without any further action on the matters.

These allegations are made towards individuals, and they are a charge on the uprightness of the entire system as Mkhwanazi has also implicated the judiciary. The rot is long and deep. The state, he claims, is in essence captured by high-level criminal syndicates and mafias.

The allegations are yet to be tested, however, the levels of crime in this country signal there may be some fire to the smoke.

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said he had full confidence that President Cyril Ramaphosa will deal with the matter, as there was no room to “turn a blind eye” after learning of such revelations. He also criticised Mkhwanazi for going public with the matter.

“It borders on lawlessness and a banana republic that a high-ranking police commissioner can go on television and make disparaging and grave accusations and allegations in the way we have learnt about them,” he said.

Will this be yet another explosive revelation that will end in the devastation of the whistle-blower, or will it lead to the dismantling of the widespread syndicate of which he speaks?

“The matters must be investigated, but all protocols of the state must be observed.”

One’s first instinct is to frown that a methodical officer with so many years of experience and respect for the badge felt it necessary to break rank and hold a press conference. But the fact that Mkhwanazi felt this was the only way to save the police force should worry us.

If high-ranking officers have lost their trust in the internal processes of the police, what chance does a normal citizen with a legitimate complaint against the police have? It doesn’t take a lot to be convinced there might be something extremely wrong as people on the ground see the rot of crime daily. If Mkhwanazi is right and in his words “ready to die for the badge”, we are in deep trouble, as he is only one man and the machine is bigger than him.

Will this be yet another explosive revelation that will end in the devastation of the whistle-blower, or will it lead to the dismantling of the widespread syndicate of which he speaks?

If the allegations are indeed true, the number of people that need to be arrested is immense considering the depth of the network as described by Mkhwanazi, and some of the players, it seems, are very powerful. Given the history of how crime is dealt with in this country, it might amount to nothing.