By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Police Minister Senzo Mchunu has accepted President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to place him on a leave of absence with immediate effect.
Ramaphosa announced on Sunday evening that a judicial commission of inquiry will probe claims that organised crime syndicates have infiltrated law enforcement and intelligence agencies—accusations that directly implicate senior political figures, including Mchunu.
Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, the police commissioner in KwaZulu-Natal province, said Mchunu and senior national police officials in March seized dockets with information on political killings and effectively froze the probes.
He questioned the motives behind what he said were Mchunu’s plans to disband a task team established to look into the deaths.
Mchunu issued a statement late on Sunday, saying: “I welcome and respect the President’s decision and pledge my commitment to the process.
“Honour and integrity are the virtues I personally subscribe to and which we all need to make efforts to uphold. I stand ready to respond to the accusations against me and account to the citizens of the Republic, fully and honestly so.”
A Cabinet minister will fill Mchunu’s position until August, when Firoz Cachalia, the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council’s chairperson and a former Gauteng community safety MEC, will take over.
Cachalia will become acting police minister only in August because he is a professor of law at the University of the Witwatersrand, a position from which he is retiring at the end of this month.
Mkhwanazi’s accusations, meanwhile, painted South Africa’s criminal justice system as infested with corrupt officials.
And Ramaphosa, when outlining what exactly the judicial commission of inquiry would look into, referenced past and present state officials, ranging from spooks to prosecutors.
Parliament’s police committee chairperson, Ian Cameron, said: “Police capture is real. Parliament and SAPS leadership cannot wait for yet another long, expensive process while trust in policing collapses further.”
“A commission is only as good as the will to act on its findings, and so far that track record is poor — maybe this can somehow be better?”